


You The Abandoned

by Ledgers



Series: You The Living [2]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood and Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, M/M, Oral Sex, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2018-12-13 09:36:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11757042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ledgers/pseuds/Ledgers
Summary: “Do you love me?”He wishes he could reach through his skin to grab his heart and squeeze so as to slow it down. His eyes close and he exhales a trembling breath, looking for a semblance of control– “No." The body underneath him goes very still. "I do not.”





	1. Alive

**Author's Note:**

> This is it, the second part to "You The Living". There will be five? chapters, I think?, and as promised the story will be told in both Luke's and Jones' perspective, and maybe even Jack, though I honestly don't think I will write from his perspective all that much. Let me know what you guys think of this.

_**Alive** _

* * *

 

 

The water runs red where he lies, a hand splayed on his chest where the man can see the dark scar running from collarbone to the center of his chest.

 

He has not left the boy's side, his fingers still curled around a fragile wrist and feeling something akin to, not sadness, but  _loss,_  after he feels the pulse throbbing beneath the skin fade to nothing. The memory of that mouth on his neck, of tearful blue eyes gazing back at him, should not shake him as much as it does. The boy, giving up his life for Jones' wretched own, thinking that two nights of intimacy meant more than that, had meant nothing to him. A warm body to hold onto on nights when his dreams had been too vivid, when all the alcohol had not been enough.

 

It meant nothing.

 

There is no breath filling the boy's lungs, no heaving of his chest, but the skin touching the palm of Jones' hand is still giving off warmth. For a moment he presses his hand flat to the boy's side to feel the skin there, warm and wet to the touch, and remembers how it had felt to let his hand slide down that sun tanned chest when the boy had still been alive and breathing harshly into his neck. Remembers the sight of his body, bruised and bleeding after he had come apart in Jones' hands, and that when he had the man's heart all to himself, he had sacrificed his own.

 

As much as he wants to, he cannot shake him.

 

What did the boy's live matter to him? He who feels nothing at all?

 

He cuts through flesh and muscle, grasping for the root of his pain. The pads of his fingers brush along the organ beating where Luke's own heart should have been but is not, listening to the pained heartbeat he had never thought he would hear again. Even muted by flesh, it goes up the length of Jones' arm and reverberates in his chest.

 

Anger surges through him, anger at the boy for forcing him to face his own cowardice and shame. He would rather feel nothing than the pain scarred into his heart, would rather feel nothing than wear his  _feelings_  on his sleeve like this. He suddenly feels vulnerable, painfully exposed with his heart in the breast pocket of his coat.

 

He gives his men the order to pull back; let the ships and the men on them destroy themselves. He has what he came for.

 

Then, with uncharacteristic gentleness he gathers the boy into his arms, the dead body feeling too heavy and too light, and carries him to the offside of the ship. The tentacle wound around Luke's arm leaves his skin with his mark and, before Jones can think of the consequences this will have, he loosens his hold on him and watches as the body plunges into the dark water of the Caribbean sea...

 

* * *

 

It was not the heart shaped mouth that had him so fascinated with the boy, not the bruised body that had bared itself to his gaze as rain fell on his skin, no– It was the eyes. Those intense eyes that conveyed all of his emotions, his every thought with their brutal honesty behind them. Eyes that would narrow with anger that coursed through his blood and then became half lidded as the anger subsided. Eyes that were a vibrant blue at the slightest feeling of happiness.

 

The boy had been so... human. His inner feelings had bled through the skin like an open wound and stained his face with so much emotion, like his heart and his eyes were connected, that for a time Jones had felt as though he really knew him inside and out.

 

But that was before he died in his arms, with an unreadable expression on his face. Jones had never seen it before, had never seen him smile like he had, his eyes filled with an emotion the man had never seen there. He had seen desperation before, curiosity, anger– but as the boy was dying, all he saw in the nuances of his expression was nothing but love– an expression he is so intimately familiar with.

 

Those eyes had looked with so much more love than Jones had ever been given.

 

* * *

 

_**Luke** _

 

He feels like nothing.

 

There is no heartbeat in his ears as rivulets of blood run down his arms, no pulse throbbing beneath his skin. No sadness squeezing its fingers tight around his throat and no anger tearing through him. Nothing but the scar on his chest that makes him remember what being alive had felt like.

 

 _When was the last time he felt the blood pumping through his veins with excitement, or when happiness formed dimples in his cheek and tugged his mouth into a smile? When had he last stifled a laugh behind that tight lipped smirk of his?_  It feels as if he has poured all of his emotions and feelings into the hole in his chest, a hole where his heart should be but isn't.

 

* * *

 

He is stranded on an island with black sand covering the beach and jagged rock formations that dig painfully into his feet. Split knuckles are brushing against the rock of the cliff as he climbs and vermilion footprints from bloodied feet stick to the rough surface. He nearly falls when his hands, slick with blood or sweat he can't tell, slip from cliff's ledge and his fingernails scratch at the rock, panicking. He can hear his own breathing, every panted breath harsher than the last, as he heaves himself up and collapses onto his back.

 

The cold night air on his skin is a strong contrast to the warm blood filling his mouth after he finds the inside of his cheek with his teeth. He tastes copper, thick and heavy on his tongue as he gets up and faces the dark water of the ocean.

 

The waves crashing on shore are deafening.

 

The sky above is of the darkest blue.

 

His feet pad closer to the cliff's edge.

 

_One. Two..._

 

_What am I doing?_

 

He is no coward. He has never thought he would die  _through_  cowardice.

 

Could he close his eyes for long enough, and if he shatters his skull on the jagged rocks– Will he die? Tears spill from his closed blue eyes and a muted whimper spills past his lips. He is alone, so utterly alone, and it is all self inflicted. He did this to himself. And love– love did this, too.

 

Through his blurred vision Luke can barely see the fading bruises on his arm where  _he_  last touched him, and as his fingers trace the reddened circles, his toes curl over the edge. His last thought is of the man's hand on his arm...

 

_Stop._

 

A whisper. A hallucination. It has to be all in his head, but still doubt plagues him, weighing heavily in his stomach. _What am I doing–_  His soul shrinks, horror and self-loathing trickling through into his consciousness. _Can I really go through with this?_

 

The heels of his hands cover his eyes and he stumbles back. He realizes with a hard swallow the enormity of what he is, was, about to do. It isn't blood he tastes on his tongue then, but bile. His knees give in. He is terrified, and suddenly a bright flash of green lights up the sky and bleeds through the back of his eyelids.

 

_I am coming._

 

When Luke opens his eyes he thinks he can see the sails of the  _Dutchman,_  but this too has to be in his head...

 

* * *

 

**Jones**

 

Jones eyes drink in the sight of him sleeping, curled up on the bunk with his knees bent and hands fisted into the sheets, his jaw clenched and brows furrowed. The waves of relief he feels washing through him are so strong he thinks that even in his sleep, the boy will have sensed them.

 

For a moment Jones listens to his breathing, lips parted to drag in soft breaths, and suppresses the urge to move his hand onto Luke's chest to reassure himself of his presence. The boy's hands need bandaging, as do his feet, but the wounds, however he had gotten them, do not disturb him half as much as the dried blood mottling that skin. There is so much of it, clinging to his wrists and the beds of his nails. Jones would have asked about them if Luke had not been unconscious when his first mate had carried him in.

 

He tells himself there will be time for all of that later, and shuts his eyes. The  _Dutchman_  groans as the waves crash into her, water leaking through the gaps of the rotting boards that are bending from the pressure of the storm. Thunder shakes the darkened night, and through it all the boy never wakes. It is hard for Jones to think of him as a man when his face seems so  _gentle,_ if somewhat weary in the darkness of these quarters. There is a softness to his features that belies nothing but innocence. Still, the body beside him, trembling from the cold, is not the body of a boy, but a man– softness or no.

 

And it does not make sense to him. He cannot seem to figure it out– _how this boy,_  this boy with his mouth open in his sleep and soft hands, _could have done what he did for him._

 

* * *

 

It is barely audible, but nevertheless he hears the pause in Luke's breathing as he wakes, and listens to the rustle of the sheets behind him with something close to  _anxiousness_. He feels it surge through him in waves, this feeling of the storm outside suddenly raging inside his chest, for he has no explanation as to why  _he_  did what he did, at least no explanation that will not expose his guts to the boy, how fractured he really is.

 

The movements have stilled. From where Jones is sitting with his back turned, he glances at the small form on his bunk. He would have thought Luke to still be asleep, so unmoving is he, if it were not for the widened blue eyes staring at him, and the look in them has his own mouth tighten noticeably. His fingers glide over the keys of the organ, like a caress to a lover he has not seen in he does not know how long, but there is no noise coming from the pipes. He has not played in a long time.

 

The boy's voice is hoarse when he asks, in a tone that is dripping with too much emotion, “Why...? I thought–”

 

If only he knew himself. He should not have saved him, should not care if the cuts on his soft hands will scar. He should not  _care, s_ o that at least he would know what to do with him. He cannot have him on his ship, and he cannot let him go.

 

“Think nothing of it.”

 

“Nothing...?” Luke croaks out, and Jones can feel the frustration bubbling up inside of him.

 

“ _Nothing.”_

 

His mind made up, he grabs the clean bandages from his desk and settles onto the chair in front of the boy. A look in such close proximity shows him blonde hair mused with sleep and red, wriggly lines where the sheets have dug into the boy's cheek. The heel of a hand is rubbing at bleary blue eyes and then Luke is back to staring at him.

 

A bucket beside him contains clean water and he picks up a rag, taking a hand into his own and putting it on his knee. Jones cannot see the expression on that face, but he hopes that Luke will fall back asleep after he has seen to the worst of his injuries.

 

The cuts are deep. Ragged lines on both of his palms that will take time to heal. They will leave scars, and the thought is like a weight crushing his chest. He roughly cleans the dried blood off that darkened skin and if Luke is in pain he doesn't show it. The only indication that Jones is being too rough is the frown tugging at the boy's mouth. He drops the rag negligently back into the bucket and then none too gently wraps up his hand. Loop after loop he wraps around it and pulls so tight that he can hear a small whimper leave those lips– and then tighter still.

 

“ _Ngh–!”_

 

“What ye did for me–” Jones starts and then pauses, the part of that is still human wanting to brush his thumb over the back of Luke's hand, though he keeps from doing so. “I have not forgotten.”

 

It is as close to a “thank you” as he will give him. When he is done with the boy's hands and there is nothing more for him to do he is clutching for an illusion of composure. His eyes narrow and his lips quirk into a harsh smile.

 

“You had better put on your clothes.”

 

Jones notices with some amusement the flush creeping into the boy's cheeks as he realizes that he is very much naked and that the sheets have long slipped past his groin. He mutters something like “fuck” and hastily covers himself, looking away with his fists clenched around the thin material of the sheets. Jones can smell the rain and old blood still clinging to his skin, and below that a scent that is uniquely him, warm and strong. As unimaginable as it seems and as absurd as it is, the boy smells of sunshine. That is the only real word Jones can explain it with.

 

And he would have taken him then, breathed in that scent of him, mixed with the smell of sweat and sex, if it were not for the time running through the gap of his fingers faster than he thought it would.

 

"We will reach land soon, so be ready to leave.”

 

“Land?”

 

He doesn't elaborate, handing him the bandages for his feet. Luke doesn't need him for that, he tells himself. The boy can take care of them on his own.

 

 

* * *

 

**Luke**

 

Land, it turns out, is the port of Padres. It is  _home,_  but from where he stands it doesn't look anything like he remembers.  _I guess it has been more than nine years. Nothing lasts forever._  He takes in the sight with a dark look on his face, his eyes moving from the lights of the town to his bandaged hands, and from there to Maccus staring at him, all teeth and his side of friendliness.

 

“What's with that look, hm?”

 

“What look?”

 

“ _That_ look. You don't look too happy to be livin' again 's all.” Maccus shrugs, as if he couldn't care less, and pats him on the shoulder. “Personally, kid, I didn' think I'd ever see your sorry arse again. But after what you did for the Captain...” Luke thinks he can hear a touch of respect in the man's tone.

 

“He's my Captain.” he argues and tugs at a loose thread from the bandages. The knot Jones' has tied around his wrist is too tight and he wonders if it was done on purpose.

 

“Aye. He's mine too, but I wouldn't have done what you did. Not for anything.”

 

Running a hand through his hair and ruffling the blonde strands as he looks away from Maccus, jaw set in a hard line, Luke can feel anger bubble up inside him. Anger at what, he doesn't know. Maccus has been the closest thing to a friend he has had on this ship, but sometimes the man doesn't know when to leave something alone.

 

“It's not like that.” he snaps, walking past him to get a closer look at the town. But it is, and by the wide grin on Maccus' face he knows it too. To his right, Koleniko elbows him painfully in the ribs to get him to go back to work. Together they lower the boat that will take them to the docks into the water. Luke has to bite his lip to keep from crying as the rope touches the skin of his hands and he nearly lets go of it.

 

“Leave the kid alone, mate. Can't you see he doesn't wanna talk about it?”

 

“ _Shove off._  You didn' notice the look on the Capt'n's face when he saw 'im? I haven' seen that look before and I've been on this ship longer than you.”

 

“And in  _your_  head, you think that means they're in love? You're even thicker than I thought.”

 

Maccus grins at him, “Makes sense, doesn't it? I mean they did fuc– “

 

Luke punches him in the stomach, _hard,_ murder in his eyes and he looks to Koleniko when he hears the man's amused snort, but he only holds up his hands. Seconds later a laughing Maccus straightens to his full height to stare down at him.

 

“Your lucky I like you, lad.”

 

He huffs out an annoyed breath.

 

“ _Flynn._  Captain wants to see you.”

 

Koleniko rolls his eyes and gets back to work. Maccus, still staring at him with that grin on his face, tilts his head to the Captain's quarters. Ignoring the argument that picks up soon as his back is to them, Luke marches off.

 

 

* * *

 

**Jones**

 

He never knew anger had a scent, but as he breathes in the the boy standing so close to him that he can feel the angry breaths brushing the side of his face, he thinks he will not ever forget this scent.

 

It is a scent that tells Jones that the boy staring up at him will not go quietly. He smells like sun and damp earth and coppery violence, like control slipping from bony fingers and anger dragging its tongue along that dark skin. He would never admit to it, but he admires the display of tightly wound anger, the expression on his face Luke has masked with bared white teeth and narrowed blue eyes.

 

“What are you talking about?” he grits out between his teeth, brows furrowed in anger. He looks so much like the petulant, arrogant boy Jones has always thought of him as. The flaring nostrils and the muscle jumping in his jaw– he is angrier than Jones' would have thought him to be, if not angry enough to make the leap into violence. He would not last for long, and they both know it.

 

“A lifetime of servitude, if I remember.” The tentacles that make up the thick of his beard are tense and his eyes are narrowed into slits. “Ye have given your life.”

 

“Then what was all of this for? So you can throw me off your ship, like Jack did?”

 

“I am giving ye yer freedom, ye unthankful whelp! Do ye not realize that every man on this ship would do anythin' to be in yer position?”

 

“You think I care about freedom?”

 

The words have something so violent within him take control of him that he grabs the boy's throat between the claw of his hand, digging brutally into the soft skin there and crushing the breath out of his lungs. The whelp's feet are barely touching the floor.

 

He would do anything for even the slightest grasp of freedom. He longs for it with every fiber, every shred of his wretched being and would do anything to take back what he gave away so freely when he was still _lovesick_ – and this boy, this damned, immature, ignorant boy, he would give it away as if it meant nothing to him.

 

With every breath he feels the absence of his freedom like a disease spreading from his heartless chest to his soulless insides and beyond, to the dark and damp recess of his chest where feelings and emotions used to reach, but do no longer. He has not felt what it is like to be free in so long– has not felt anything...

 

The impulse to touch suddenly rips through him, tearing at his self imposed self control. Blood is spilling down that neck– so red that he loosen his grip. Still, he feels a sense of conciliation at the sight of the red splotches there that will latest come morn darken into purple bruises and the blood that stains the collar of his shirt.

 

He will not need bandages.

 

A pained whimper that leaves Luke's lips, and Jones' fingers slide into the soft hair at the back of his head, nails scratching at the boy's scalp. His voice never changes tone or cadence as he murmurs, “Nothing is ever simple with you, is it, Mr Flynn?”

 

The hand in his hair curls into a fist and Jones tugs the boy's head back roughly. He can see the bob of Luke's throat as he swallows, the dots of perspiration on his skin, and the image nearly makes him change his mind to keep him by his side, to make him his and break him apart in the only way he knows how. There is no rationality to it, all he really wants is to keep this human part of himself as close as he can, no matter how much it bruises him.

 

He leans in and shuts his eyes to breathe in the boy's scent for the last time, soaking in the warmth clinging to his skin, and then lets go of him. The moment of vulnerability passes and he is left grasping for some semblance of his control.

 

“Go.” he orders him in a voice that is not as cold and not as hard as he would have liked. “If yer not gone by sunlight, I will take ye back to the locker myself. Leave,” _Live,_  he thinks, “and do not come back again.”

 

He does not know why the sight of tears pooling in those eyes makes him feel the way it does _,_ when he should not be feeling anything at all with his heart still tucked out of sight in the folds of his coat, but the boy turns abruptly, rubbing at his face and exhaling a breath that makes his whole body tremble. The anger has fled his features and all Jones can see on his face is quiet acceptance. He nods, walking for the door– and then pauses.

 

“How long?” he utters in a voice that trembles just as much as his body does, his chin nearly touching his chest and eyes squeezed shut.

 

“I don't know what yer referring to.”

 

“How long– _how long till you can come on land?”_

 

Jones goes very still. What little fragment of control he thought he had slips from his fingers when he looks at him and sees the sincerity on that face. His expression conveys honesty, and Jones has to avert his eyes to keep his face blank.

 

“Five years. Give or take.” he answers honestly. “I don't imagine ye to be there after that.”

 

At his last words Luke looks at him, eyes narrowed, though if it is out of anger Jones cannot tell. He keeps his eyes on Jones' face, as if he is gauging the meaning behind his words. His mouth turns into a frown.

 

 

“I won't abandon you.”

 

 

And with those parting words he walks out, leaving him to his thoughts.

 


	2. Living

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. I had to rewrite this chapter because I wasn't happy with it. It is longer than the last chapter to make up for it.

As a child, he had hated his life in this miserable town. He had hated his father and he had hated the clothes he wore, and he'd hated how messy his hair looked and the house that smelled of blood and spilled alcohol. It was then he had taught himself not to cry, hearing his mother's late-night mournings over his father. It was then he had first heard the stories of Captain Jack Sparrow.

 

How old had he been...?

 

He had been seven, and he would beat up the other children that liked to say to him _  "where is your father gone?"  _ and _  "you'll never be a pirate" _ . His mother would scold him and utter her disappointment while she bandaged Luke's hands, and she would tell him in a reaffirming voice that his father had been a sailor, he had been born at sea, and it was in his blood to one day be on a ship. Hearing her say it, Will had thought it was true.

 

Because that is how the truth works when you are a child.

* * *

 

Through the white mist, Luke can not see the ship dive beneath the water. Jones had not seen him off. Instead, Luke had left witout another word.

 

He is on the shores of his childhood, the memories of _ back then  _ laying at his bare feet.  His mouth quirks downward at the image of a younger version of himself running along these very waters in his mind, all messy blonde hair and teeth bared lips, disheveled, and wearing the ill fitting clothes he had worn as a child.

 

The memory slips like sand through his fingers.

 

He starts to walk, though where he is going he doesn't know. He has nowhere _ to  _ go, really, and the thought of being abandoned on an island he doesn't know how to navigate weighs heavy on his shoulders.

 

Derelict houses become distinct as he comes closer inland and disappear in the mist of white as he passes them. They all look the same to him– worn, with dirty windows and no lights inside, though the streets are surprisingly full. There are sailors swaying drunkenly on their feet and ugly prostitutes that are unabashedly enjoying the attention of the grubby hands reaching for them. Luke averts his eyes and keeps walking.

 

In his mind, he thinks the world in front of him seems uglier than it did on the _ Dutchman. _

 

The walk to his childhood home doesn't take very long. Luke feels anxiety tingling in his arms and neck. The house is little more than a shack, and his eyes take in the structure that groans under the weight of its roof. He half thinks it will cave in on him if he goes inside. Knuckles turning white, he is aware of the tremor in his hand as he steps into the house while the floorboards creak under his feet. The scent of rotting wood and salt are heavy in the air.

 

He has walked this floor before, though his feet had been smaller then, but somehow it doesn't feel familiar.

 

It isn't the home he remembers from his childhood. _Home_ had been a house filled with laughter, a room covered in splinters, the memory of his mother cutting his hair when it got too long, of charts scattered on his bed, and of his soaked clothes lying on the floor. This isn't that, only an empty place with dust on the surfaces and glass panes. There is a sick roiling underneath his skin as he steps into his bedroom. Curtains billow out across the scuffed floor through an open window.

 

The thought of spending five years alone in this house haunts him. What he wouldn't give to see Jack.

 

He sits down on the edge of the dingy mattress, staring at his bandaged hands and the dried blood stains on them. Jones had bandaged them. He had rescued Luke from the locker and let him sleep on his bed, only to let him go like he meant nothing to him. And perhaps he hadn't. Perhaps Luke had fooled himself into thinking that their hard, exhausted rounds of fucking had meant something. Perhaps the man had noticed that their actions held no longer within them notes of hatred, but rather grudging affection. Perhaps that is why he had let him go.

 

What could he have said to convince him to let Luke stay? That he is just a eighteen year old boy who doesn't know how to be alone? How the bandages on his hands need changing and he can't quite bring himself to do it?

 

Luke can feel the hysterical laughter building up in his chest. He would do anything that the man wanted him to, if he would take him back. He would take it without complaint. He would lie back and let Jones take the whip to his back again, if that's what it took, and he would beg for more because he knows that the man would give it to him.

 

But...

 

There is always a "but", isn't there? Because Jones is gone, and Luke will not see him again for five years, _if_ he ever sees him again...

* * *

 

That night, he wakes up breathing harshly into his pillow and with the sheets tangled around his feet. His harsh breaths go unheard in the darkness of his room. In his dreams he is drowning. He dreams of water and the taste of salt in the back of his throat, of a dark blue vision and the ocean weighing down on his chest.

 

_Breathe... It was only a dream. It was just a dream._

 

Hands fisted into the fabric of his shirt, he is aware of the heartbeat beneath the pads of his fingers. His eyes widen, and he is a little startled to realize that his heart is beating save and sound inside his chest. His hands slide under his shirt and clumsy fingers trace over the scar tissue there, all the way from collarbone to the center of his chest. He hadn't noticed it– how could he not have noticed? _How...?_

 

He can feel his heart beating and hear the blood rushing in his ears. He is awake, and wth the realization, the emptiness inside his chest doesn't feel so empty anymore. There is a dull ache clawing at the cavity of his heart, and i t is Luke then who doesn't understand why Jones, with his cruel words and callous hands , d id what he did for him.

 

A part of him thinks he doesn't want to understand.

* * *

 

A loose floorboard under his bed hides a bottle of whiskey, and, drinking it Luke can taste an undercurrent of nostalgia in his blood. It becomes a safety net in the madness that is his life.

 

He wanders along the beach one night, having found comfort at the bottom of a bottle and not able to find his way out, his eyes are looking for the sails of the _ Dutchman  _ in the distance. It is only wishful thinking, and in Luke's world there is no space for wishful, and the emptied bottle slips from his fingers...

* * *

 

He visits his mother's grave.

 

The earth around her grave is undisturbed. There is no one else to bring flowers but him. Nine years after her death, Luke finds he can't remember her face.

 

Her body, only bones and dust now, lies beneath dirt and stone. She doesn't know that her son is standing so close. Doesn't know that he is living unloved, unseen and alone. That his heart is still beating, beating again, steadily within his chest.

 

He wonders what she would say to him, if she could see him. If she would recognize him still and talk about his hair and how much it has grown.

 

The tears come suddenly and unbidden. His stomach clenches and the pain in his heart urges him to sob. He buries his head in his hands and starts to cry.

* * *

 

He befriends a boy his age w ith a mop of the reddest hair Luke has ever seen,  that goes by the name of Paul. At the end of each day he and Luke share adventures over a bottle of rum, and for the first time in fifteen days the corners of Luke's mouth quirk up into a smile. They take off their clothes to go swimming in the ocean and lie naked on their stomachs in the sand, taking drags from a cigar shared between them.

 

One night they are drinking rum and watching the sky swallow the sun, and Paul's arm is brushing against Luke's side. The boy's skin is damp and warm, and the small contact feels good enough that Luke doesn't push him off when Paul leans over him to take the bottle out of his hand. He likes Paul, because he calls him “Luke”. Not “Mr Flynn” as Jones had in his guttural tone, spitting out his name as though it is poison in his mouth, and not “Luke” in the way that Jack did in his lilting voice.

 

He calls him “Luke” as if they are friends.

 

It is either the alcohol or the close proximity of the redhead that makes Luke's head spin. He tells Paul about Jack Sparrow and about how the man has a way of digging his own grave and escaping death again and again, and Paul laughs with him at the ridiculousness of it. Talking about Jack, Luke feels the weight that has been crushing his chest lighten, and, for a minute he wishes Jack were sitting beside him and laughing with him.

 

“You're bent, aren't you?” Paul asks him while taking a slow sip of rum.

 

“What?”

 

“You know...”

 

Large brown eyes are laughing at him.

 

As a boy Luke didn't know what “bent” meant. It had been one of the insults he had heard growing up. Shirt-lifter. Poof. Bender. They had meant “strange”. “Sick”. A man who would do it to another man. Luke had known what “bent” meant when the other boys had sneered at him because he had kissed another boy, and Luke had never forgotten. “Bent” had meant perverted, different.

 

“Oh.”

 

Luke can't stop the color from creeping over his face. He only nods while his eyes travel over the other boy's freckled shoulders. Paul's mouth splits into a grin and he says “Good to know.” before he folds Luke's finger around the neck of the bottle and presses a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth.

* * *

 

He is walking home one night when he sees Paul on the ground and getting beaten by another man. Well over six feet tall, he stands over the smaller boy, hitting him again and again while calling him “a fucking tease”. Without thinking Luke runs to help, only to catch a fist in the face.

 

“I saw him first, so piss off!” the man yells, clearly drunk, and Luke scowls at him.

 

As he gets up from the ground and presses his tongue to his bleeding lip, all he thinks is how neat the knife in his belt would look in the man's side, and how scared Paul looks next to him...

* * *

 

It is nearing sundown and the light spilling into his room is red.

 

Footsteps, loud in the silence of his house pull him from the depths of sleep into full consciousness. He presses the heel of his hand against a bleary eye and listens to the pacing feet in the other room. He knows exactly where that person is, can hear the path he takes from the threshold to the window to the chair and to the liquor cabinet, and then back to the chair. Luke knows who it is and is out of bed like a landslide.

 

“Jack.”

 

The man is sitting in his chair and pouring whiskey into a glass. He doesn't look up when Luke takes a seat across from him, though he is sure he can see a smile tugging at Jacks lips. He reaches for his own glass and cleans it with the sleeve of his shirt before pouring himself a splash of the golden liquid. The beads in Jack's hair click together softly.

 

Taking a small sip, the taste on his tongue has become familiar. Luke feels it trickle down his throat and pool warmly in his chest and in his stomach. He still coughs against the burning in his throat and watches the liquid swirl in his glass.

 

“You look awful, luv,” Jack says finally, and the words have Luke's features twisting into a grimace. “You really should think about cutting that hair a little, eh? A trim right here couldn' hurt.”

* * *

**Jack**

Jack discovers, by and by, that the boy is an emotional drunk. The whiskey seems to rouse Luke's melancholy and his temper, and it makes his smile wide. It loosens his tongue, and he is spilling his guts to Jack without him having to ask. His drinking habits have changed, if the way he keeps refilling his glass full to the rim is anything to by.

 

He swallows down the words forming in his mouth and listens to the boy telling him of how his dreams are full of water and cold hands around his neck, and how most nights that alone is enough to keep him awake. Jack looks at the boy as though he wants to comfort him as he would a small child and then thinks better of it. He thinks that Luke wants him to, but rather, his fingers curl around his glass. 

 

“S'alright if you want to cry, mate. No shame in it.” He keeps his voice soft, the words paddened as to not upset the boy sitting infront of him.

 

Luke's jaw twitches helplessly, but he only averts his eyes and bites down on his lip.

 

There are holes in the wall hides behind. The months apart have estranged them, but to Jack, the root cause of them is crude and obvious, as is the sadness and confusion pouring out of them. Luke is wary of him to the point of clumsiness. He flinches at the sound of the chair scraping on the floor and tenses at the slightest movement of his. Jack can see how fragile he is, and how desperately Luke is trying to keep that from him. His movements are slightly unsteady when he pours another glass, liquid sloshing over his hands, and, before long Jack grabs the bottle out of his hand. The stink of alcohol is heavy on his breath.

 

“Ah, I think you have had quite enough of that.”

 

He has never in his life looked out much for others, only for himself. Luke is the only exception.

* * *

**Luke**

There he goes, talking to Luke like he knows and understands him. It makes him want to lash out and smash his fist into Jack's face.

 

It would be pointless to try and explain to Jack that he did what he had to. Because you do what you have to when you are responsible for a life that is not your own. That he did for Jones what he did for reasons other than that, Jack doesn't need to know.

 

It has to be the alcohol, when Luke opens his mouth and explains it anyway.

 

“I loved him, Jack.” he says slowly, quietly. He doesn't say, _“And it wasn't enough.”_ because he doesn't need to. Jack knows. He knows, because the both of them are not where they want to be, but rather they are on their way to drink themselves into an early grave.

 

“I should've listened to you. _Why didn't you make me listen to you?”_

 

He coughs at the bitter bile on the his tongue as a wave of nausea washes over him. The rum has done its work. He gags, and, at the sound Jack is at his side and rubbing circles into his back. A wet splash on sodden floorboards and the alcohol burning in his gut. A heavy, sick roiling underneath his skin. One hand is on his neck and leading him to the washbasin by the window.

 

“Easy, luv, easy.” Jack murmurs above him while he washes Luke's face. Water slides down his neck and chest, and Luke can only nod because his throat is not working anymore. “When did you last get a full nights sleep, eh?”

 

It isn't quite an “I'm sorry for what happened”, but it is somewhere in the space between “I know I messed up” and “I'm here for you if you need me”, and that is enough.

* * *

 

When Luke opens his eyes, looking at the blurry outline of Jack Sparrow sleeping beside him, he knows he is dreaming. What is Jack still doing here, snoring softly with his mouth open and drool running down his chin? Luke has never known him to stay very long in one place. It isn't that he is not relieved to see him, and it is not that he thinks that Jack would ever leave him, but he realizes that he had expected him to do so anyway.

 

That's just the kind of man Jack is.

 

He often forgets that there are good sides to Jack, too.

 

As he lies back onto the uncomfortable matress of his bed, he thinks he much prefers this to the dreams of drowning in the ocean.

 

 

Luke wakes up with the poor excuse of a blanket sticking to his thighs. He is still wearing his pants, though his shirt is gone. His eyes widen when realizes his erection is making a little, damp spot against the cotton of the sheets.

 

How he can go from having a nightmare to having an explicit dream, he doesn't know. All he knows is that his cock is hard and that the images of his dream are still vividly painted in his mind– another body pressed against his, the large hand on him and his cock and the familiar smell of tabbacco and salt in his nose and the hard floor against his back as–

 

Dark brows furrow in anger. Knuckles are white against dampened sheets.

 

“Sleep well, did ya, mate?” Jack asks from the other side of the room and, to Luke's horror, he is winking at him with that smirk of his that says “I know what you've been dreaming”.

 

He blows a puff of air up to his bangs to get them out of his eyes, looking at his erection tenting the sheets. Embarrassment colors his cheeks a dark red.

 

“I'm sure I do not want to understand what you've seen in the old squidface.” When Luke opens his mouth to speak, his vision is obscured by something dark and heavy. “Say, how did you and 'im do it? I really want to know.”

 

An annoyed groan and Luke pulls the fabric down. Having a pile of clothes thrown in his face is not the way he likes to wake up. Neither is with a hard on. He shoves his arm through the sleeve of his shirt and fingers the button on his collar, if only not to have to meet Jack's questioning eyes.

 

“I would've thought that the _great Captain Jack Sparrow_ , breaker of women's hearts all over the Carribbean, would know how to _fuck.”_ he says.

 

“I do know how to _fuck,_ as you so eloquently put it.”

 

“Then there's nothing to talk about, is there?”

 

An amuesed snort is his answer.

* * *

 

“He fancies you, that one.” Jack says to him one night where he and Luke are walking along the Pearl's side, gesturing toward the lights and noise of the port and Paul calling his name from across the bay.

 

Luke shrugs, as if he hasn't already noticed this, because, really, what else is he supposed to do? He knows how foolish he is. It doesn't help that Jack is wiggling his eyebrows at him and Paul is smiling at him with such adoration that Luke has to avert his eyes.

 

It has been so long since he has had another's hands on him and he is scared, because his body feels like it is not his own. Another man had left his marks on Luke's skin, and although they have long faded, it feels as if they have slipped underneath his skin and into the marrow of his very bones. He knows where the dark red circles had curled around his arm and around his waist and his neck and, most of all, he knows he can't shake Davy Jones.

 

When Paul kisses him that night and slides a hand under Luke's shirt, pushing a tongue into his mouth, all he can think about is how the body on top of his is too warm and the skin against his palm is too smooth and he doesn't feel anything at all.

 

Luke realizes, with a sad kind of regret, that this is his first kiss, he has never kissed Davy Jones, and perhaps he never will.

* * *

 

Jack leaves with the promise to return in thirty-four days.

 

A storm is coming, he'd said, and Luke can feel it whistle in his chest as he stares out to sea. It comes suddenly, and with a force he hasn't seen in a while, so forcefull and destructive that it makes the moldering boards of his house groan and creak. The water is as dark as the night itself. The crashing of waves fills his ears.

 

It is then he sees her, coming out of the sea in a gown of... blue? Black? Luke can't be sure, for the color seems to change with each movement. The low cut of it bares her chest to him, but his eyes are drawn to the sway of her hips as she moves towards him, fluid as water. From her hair, seaweat is sticking wetly to her shoulders. She has a way of walking, like she has been alive for a long time and has seen all that is in the world.

 

Luke thinks he knows who she is. He thinks she knows who he is, too.

 

“You're 'im,” she says with a reveal of inky black teeth, and though her mouth is smiling, it doesn't reach her eyes. “de boy who saved Davy Jones.”

 

This close, he can smell the salt clinging to her skin. It is the sea standing before him in all her untamed beauty, with eyes that are looking deep into his soul. Luke finds that he is terrified. She is a bit taller than him, and when she reaches out a hand to touch his face he nearly flinches. Her smile widens.

 

“Shy, you are, but you don'ave to fear me. I am only 'ere to thank you for wha' you did, Luke Flynn.”

 

“Thank me?”

 

His name sounds familiar on her tongue, as if he has heard her say it before.

 

“Aye. You saved my love.” she says, and the words stir something violent inside of him. He knows that she knows as well as him that he is angry by how her mouth seems to widen more.

 

“I didn't know you cared.” he says through clenched teeth. His body trembles with suppressed rage.

 

“I would'ave come to him, if I had thought him to still be tha man I fell in love wit'.”

 

“That doesn't make it alright!” he argues back, but she is no longer listening to him.

 

One of her hands is moving his shirt out of the way while the other is running its fingers over the scar on his chest. Seeing it, her eyes soften slightly. There is no shame in them, only pity. Pity for Luke, who in her eyes is only a boy to which anger comes with painful ease and who falls in love too easily. Who had been so desperate for recognition in this world that he didn't see Jones for who he was. Luke hadn't seen him, because he hadn't wanted to.

 

Her smile is kind, if a little sad, and she leans down to press her lips to his forhead in a gesture that is meant to comfort him as much as pacify his anger. He is too surprised to speak, and it must have shown in his face, for she laughs.

 

“You will wait for 'im, to come ashore.”

 

It isn't a real question. She can read the truth in his face.

 

She steps away from him and toward the sea. Her feet are touching the water when Luke calls out to her, because he has questions he needs answers to. “Wait! How– I don't understand it. How am I still alive? My heart–“

 

She doesn't look at him, her gown fluttering in the wind and hugging her form tight as she says, “You were not meant to die on that ship, Luke Flynn.”

 

She is talking in riddles and Luke wants to yell at her.

 

“But I did die.” he says, his hand subconsciously moving to the place on his chest where the skin is scarred red. It is still surreal to feel it beating there, his heart whole and sound.

 

There is no answer.

 

Callypso is gone.

* * *

 

Weeks turn into months turn into years. The years crawl by, little by little, and suddenly his life is painfully, endlessly normal. As normal as a boy living alone in the middle of nowhere who drinks too much can be.

 

Jack comes and goes, and no matter how often Luke promises him he will cut his hair, he never does. The long, shaggy blonde strands are reaching past his shoulders and never quite get untangled. Luke is past the point of caring. And really, why should he care about it?

 

Then there are the scars on his hands and chest and back, and Luke can't stop looking at them. Scars are a symbol of strength, Jack says, proudly showing him the scar on his arm and the one on his calf. And, were he still a child, Luke would have believed him. But he has come to believe that scars are only a symbol of survival, that the wearer of said scars had suffered, though perhaps that says more about him than it does about Jack.

 

He should be happy. Happier at least, but somehow he doesn't feel it.

 

He had not expected any letters or surprise visits (as if, he thinks bitterly), but the reality is still hard to digest.

 

His life is painfully, endlessly normal. Except that it isn't, because how can it be, if he doesn't feel it.

* * *

A young man nearly drowns out at sea, and he is rescued out of the water by a boat of fishermen. He comes to with the saddest of eyes and coughing up water, and the name “Davy Jones” on his lips. An accident, he says and doesn't say more. The men look at each other and at him, disbelief in their eyes, but he doesn't open his mouth to explain.

 

Cerulean eyes watch from a distance as he wanders along the shore line, but he doesn't know about that. He doesn't know that, would he really have drowned, those eyes would have looked for him in the deep and dark of the sea, and he doesn't know that the man watching him is not a man at all, and that at night the man, he dreams of skin soft and warm as sunlight.

 

He goes home with his heart heavy in his chest and clothes dripping wet, and curls up on the bed with his knees bent close to his chest. He sleeps then, dreaming of water...

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Jones in this chapter except for that little part at the end. Sorry about that. If you should want to know, the last chapter is written and only needs looking over.
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated.


	3. Five Years Is a Long Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been forever. But have some porn followed by plot...

The air is too warm and the night smells reminiscent of a time long ago.

 

Luke wants to hold his breath to keep himself from breathing it in, that scent of storm clouds and some other close to comforting smell.

 

Familiar, it is. A strong contrast to the tang of alcohol on his tongue. He has never tasted it before. It makes him think too much.

 

He wants to hold his breath, but the scent keeps rushing in. Only when he thinks he will asphyxiate does he take a deep breath, chest heaving with choked sobs and laughter both.

 

Another sip of sherry, and Luke finds he likes the taste of it. It burns slightly in his throat, but the warm glow of intoxication takes hold quickly enough. Although he has not been drinking for some time, given the date he feels it fitting that he should be drinking himself into delirium with it.

 

Above him, a scattering of stars light up the vast black sky. He tilts his head back to look at them, a despairing smile stretching across his face. The nails of his fingers dig painfully into the palm of his hand.

 

He knows it is only the alcohol coursing through his bloodstream that has him on the edge of tears. That, had Jones shown, he would not feel the way he does in that moment. Wouldn't be drinking. Wouldn't be rubbing at his scars and wouldn't be cursing into the night at nobody at all.

 

Equal measures of anger and sadness fill his chest, and they emerge as another sob.

 

He still can't commit to the reality of having been forgotten, but forgotten he has been. _Five years_ , he thinks with his arms trembling and shoulders shaking, _and what was it all for?_

 

He grabs the bottle and throws it out into the sea. A scream pushes at the back of his throat.

 

He trusts too easily, Jack said to him once. Always has, always will.

 

How thrilled Jones must have been to have saved Luke from drowning when he did. An outcast with no ties to any place or anyone, found and fallen into his hands to use and abuse.

 

He has always been trusting, been quick to sacrifice. And he had sacrificed. Despite the harsh realities that had surrounded him day after day, he had found a way to maintain that ability and sacrificed himself. What more had he been to Jones than a warm body to keep close then, and a trusting boy to die for him?

 

He had been naive to believe the things he had been making up inside his head-- only to forget what had been real and what had been wishful thinking on his part.

 

 _Cruel_ , he had thought once, hearing the story of Davy Jones as a child for the first time. _It was cruel_ , he said to his mother then, _how his love forgot him after he waited for her_.

 

He knows how that feels, now. How Jones must have felt a long time ago. At least, he knows how the man could have cut out his heart. He would do the same if he could.

 

_Jones..._

 

The name echoes through his head, the inside of his skull and Luke wishes he could shout it at the man himself. _JonesJonesJonesJonesJones_...

 

It is a shock then when his thoughts become audible, and he looks around himself as though he has just spoken a command that could summon the man from the shadows. He must be really drunk... There is nobody but him on the beach.

 

Tears drip onto the sand beneath his feet. The sleeves of his shirt are soaking wet from where the alcohol has spilled over his hands.

 

“Jones,” he says again, louder this time, and the name leaves a foul taste in his mouth and a sickness in his heart.

 

 _This is what it feels like to be forgotten_ , he thinks.

 

Yelling the name over and over again, as though he could make him real, as though the man would come if he did--

 

“Nothing's ever quiet with you, is it?”

 

\--his voice nearly breaks. Luke, hands clenched and teeth grit in anger, goes very still.

 

 _It's not real_ , a voice in his head says that sounds an awful lot like Jack. _You're just really, really drunk. You never could hold your alcohol, luv._

 

A sound of derision, and Luke's shoulder-blades jerk together.

 

The realization that he could be— really is there, close enough for Luke to touch solidifies like a stone in his chest, solid as the heart beating erratically against his ribcage. His eyes widen as he takes a breath of the tobacco smell in the air.

 

 _It is really him._ It has to be, although maybe the alcohol really has gone to his head.

 

But there is that inexplicable tingling in Luke's chest that he has come to associate with the man. The feeling of a hand, large and calloused curling around his upper arm and digging into his skin _feels_ real. Cool, even through the fabric of his shirt.

 

Luke suppresses a shiver, bites down on his lip until he can taste blood.

 

“Where were you?”

 

He can barely get the words out, closing his eyes at the audible waver in his voice. The hand on his arm turns to steel and suddenly he is face to face with Davy Jones himself.

 

His eyes are focused on Jones' face.

 

He looks tired, the deep blue color of his eyes faded and telling of long sleepless nights. Luke can't remember them being this gray before and, in the back of his mind, he realizes that they are nearly of the same height now.

 

“I thought-” but he stops himself before any more words can come out of his mouth.

 

He wishes the sight of Jones would stir any hatred, disgust or loathing within him, but it doesn’t. He wishes it would be enough to push Jones' arm off him, that it would not suffocate him in equal measures of relief and self-loathing. But it isn't.

 

It does.

 

The wish, or perhaps it is a need, to reach out his hand and touch him is followed closely by an even stronger need to not expose himself to Jones any further.

 

But between what he wants and what he does Luke finds there is no ground for him to stand on. He doesn't know what to do, and so he does nothing at all.

* * *

 

Jones looks not at a boy, but he looks at a man.

 

He can't but think of him as a man, now. A man with a frowning mouth and furrowed brows. A pretty, severe-looking and exuberant man in Jones' eyes, but a man still.

 

He has grown a lot from the last time Jones has seen him. There is little about him that bears resemblance to the boy Jones had watched bleed onto the floorboards of his ship. The sharp angles of his face, from his jawline to his cheekbones, are more pronounced than they had been before. His face holds traces of roughness that come with growing older. The gentleness Jones had seen there a long time ago has fled Luke's features. He is all sharp edges and long limbs now, no longer a boy at all.

 

“Fool,” he calls him with no real anger behind it. “Ye should be livin' yer life. Ye shouldn' be 'ere.”

 

Luke flinches at the edge in his tone, as if the words are more violent than Jones' hand on his arm.

 

“I shouldn't?” he asks, and it sounds innocent the way he says it, voice soft and quiet.

 

Jones is furious at him then. His clawed hand closes around the young man's hip, dragging him bodily across the sand and to the shadows of the solemn house till his back collides with the wall. A breath escapes those lips, and blue eyes widen a fraction, startled, before narrowing in anger.

 

But Luke only tries to catch his breath as he glares back at him. Jones can feel the strength in the muscles of his arm as he reaches up to take hold of Jones' wrist. Chest to chest, they look at each other, their bodies pressed together through sheer violence.

 

This is the first time Jones' sees something akin to resentment in the other's eyes.

 

When his hand finds the column of Luke's throat, he can feel the pulse beneath his thumb.

 

“No,” He feels the nails of Luke’s fingers dig into his skin and tightens his hold more. “ye shouldn'.”

 

Then he slams him against the wall, and does it again with more force.

 

“What were ye waitin’ for, _Luke Flynn?_ That I would come and greet ye as a lover would? Were ye hoping for me to declare meself to ye?”

 

“No,” Luke presses out, struggling for air. “I mean-“

 

He swallows hard against Jones' hand palming his throat.

 

“I thought- _How can I not think that?_ I was only...”

 

_I was only eighteen then, and I'm only twenty-three now._

 

“I thought we had a _thing_. Fuck, I mean, I'd never even kissed anyone before!”

 

The expression on Jones' face changes, from undiluted anger to something else entirely. His mouth tightens and the tentacles of his beard go still.

 

“Ye found someone.”

 

The words sound detached, as if he does not care that Luke had gone off and found some other soul, though his grip loosens around Luke's throat to let him breathe again.

 

“No,” He can tell it is the truth in the way the Luke's eyes soften around the edges, as if guilt outweight whatever anger he has for Jones. “but I'm not the weak boy I was then, and you can no longer tell me with your lilted tongue that you don't feel _anything_. I know you still feel. You _buried_ your heart, you didn't kill it.”

 

For the span of a heartbeat, Jones thinks he can do it and choke the life out of the fragile body before him.

 

He feels Luke draw in a breath to go on to tell him in a hoarse voice, “You can hate my words, but you know that I'm right.”

 

It isn't the alcohol Luke tastes on his tongue then, but bile. There’s a part of him that, deep down, wants to shout and scream and rant in a voice on the edge of cracking, _I want to go with you. Please-- please take me back._

 

He wants to say, _I'll do anything_ and _I don't know how be on my own_ , as he suppresses the urge to vomit all of his determination back out.

 

“You _know_ I will let you ruin me, if that's what you want,” is what he says, and Jones' fingers fall away from his throat.

 

For a long moment they look at each other with eyes that spoke louder than words. One pair narrowed and dark, the other soft and understanding.

* * *

 

 

  **Jones**

_Would he?_

 

“Do ye think I will be yer ruin?”

 

Jones watches as he swallows thickly, the forming purple bruises a sign of his loss of control. They stand in contrast with the dark shade of his skin, circling around his throat in the form of ugly fingerprints.

 

Jones takes comfort in knowing that they will still be visible long after he has gone.

 

He could not allow himself to expose his guts to the boy. Destroyed bridges were safer than those build from frail wood that, given enough time would give way underfoot.

 

Jones watches him slump forward weakly against his shoulder, a fit of coughing wrecking Luke's body. He is gasping for breath in the crook of Jones' neck, heavy breaths dragging from his throat, before he punches him in the chest.

 

As Jones tries to find his footing again, Luke reverses their positions in a scuffle of movement. Now it is Jones who’s back is against the wall, with Luke's breath brushing hotly across his face.

 

Their reversal in roles is as much a shock to him as the stench of alcohol on Luke's breath.

 

“Ye've been drinkin',” he remarks solemnly.

 

His free hand rises to cup the boy's jaw _(man. He is not a boy any longer)_ and, slowly, his fingers slide into Luke's hair.

 

It is a familiar gesture. Jones remembers doing the same before they had parted.

 

His hair has grown to nearly his shoulder in the five years they have been apart.

 

A thumb begins to stroke the nape of Luke's neck, who shivers at the touch, though his stance doesn't waver. A soft, keening whimper fills the air between them. At that, Jones thinks if only for tonight he will allow himself some measure of emotion.

 

“I have,” Luke mutters back after some time.

 

On his lips he can still taste the remainders of the expansive sherry, now regretting to have thrown it away.

 

“Didn’t think you’d come.”

 

“Mhm.”

 

“You never told me what happened. After I died. Will you tell me?”

 

He thinks about it, but what would he tell him?

 

“No longer tonight.”

 

No more words are said because they are no longer needed.

 

Luke’s hands move from where they are fisted into the lapels of Jones' coat to the buttons of his own shirt, and Jones watches, transfixed, as the white line of a scar in the center of his chest becomes more and more visible to him. Jones wants to touch him, but he hides the urge to touch behind a frown and a raised brow.

 

_What will ye do, now that ye have me?_

* * *

 

**Luke**

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, not really. He often flies on instinct these days.

 

Things start to go slightly out of focus, and he can smell the salt and musk on Jones' coat, and only faintly the familiar scent of arousal. Luke feels the flush burning in his cheeks and neck. 

 

He hesitates, suddenly self conscious of what he means to do, and then he bends his head to press his lips to the corner of Jones' mouth.

 

THe body against him goes rigid, and the fingers in Luke's hair curl into a fist.

 

It isn't what Luke hoped for, and he is about to pull back when he sees Jones close his eyes through his lashes.

 

He gathers more of his resolve, and kisses him on the mouth.

 

Jones' lips are cool, smooth, with a tang of salt to them, but disappointingly unresponsive.

 

Terribly, disappointingly inhuman, and a deep part of Luke's heart aches, thinking how little of the man he understands.

 

But then the lips against his part, a subtle but barely noticeable softening of that mouth, and Luke leans forwards and tries to feel and remember the exact moment Jones gives in to him. It is suddenly, startlingly more intimate than the touches he received when he was a boy, a lot more emotional than it is physical, and not what he expected.

 

He pulls back slightly to gasp for breath.

 

The expression on Jones' face is foreign to him. Startled, curious, and caught somewhere between wanting to touch his mouth but not quite daring.

 

“I... perhaps I have grown... _fond_... of the sound of yer heartbeat.”

 

The words are spoken with a silent admission in them Jones will never speak of out loud. Admitting to any fondness is not in the man's nature. Nor will he say it again.

 

But it is more than Luke had hoped for.

 

Jones' hand moves from his hair to his chest. His fingers trace slowly over the scar tissue there, the white line going from his collarbone to the center of Luke's chest, a look of fascination in his eyes as he does that sends shivers down Luke's spine.

 

“It must 'ave hurt,” Jones intones quietly, pressing his thumb to a roughened bit of tissue that hadn't healed well.

 

Luke sucks in a breath. His own hands find the strings of Jones' breaches, aware of their trembling as he works.

 

He nods and focuses his eyes on untying the knot. Jones' amused snort has his own mouth quirk into a smile.

 

“My soul still belongs to you,” he says, knees striking the ground as he kneels before Jones.

 

”Forever. All you need to do is take me back with you.”

* * *

 

 

  **Jones**

 His words seems lost on the boy.

 

Luke's gaze is upon him as if he has come to a decision. It is a shrewd look. Jones has never been at the receiving end of such a look.

 

That is what makes him allow the young man’s advance as he scuffles toward him on both of his knees. If it had been anything else, he might have had the decency to put his foot down and stop what he suspects is coming.

 

The motivation for such behavior is crudely obvious.

 

What would have been his nose scrunches up for a very brief moment, and he raises his brows. “Forever, hm?”

 

What does the man before him know of forever? Jones wants to spit the words at him, for time is endless to him alone, bound for eternity to his ship and the vast ocean. What does Luke know of forever, when he could live his life knowing he has the freedom to die when he chooses?

 

He blames it on the half lidded blue eyes and the young man’s not-unattractive mouth as two hands work their way into his breaches. Up close, Luke smells like dry wood and summer sweat. His cheeks are flushed and his hands are warmer than anything Jones has felt in a long time.

 

It is the first time that Luke has initiated for anything to happen between them.

 

A firm stroke is enough to get him half hard. The corner of Luke’s lips curl up into a frown and there for an instant Jones thinks he looks like he isn’t going to follow through, but then he leans forward and sets his mouth to work.

 

Arousal shies away and then coursed wetly from the pit of his stomach to the heated drag of the boy's tongue. Jones’ good hand wanders from Luke's shoulder into his hair, combing his fingers through the blonde strands and tugging at them.

 

He looks down at the blonde head bobbing gracelessly. There is a touch of pink sunburn on the bridge of Luke's nose. When he looks up at him, what Jones sees in those blue eyes isn’t disgust, but desperation.

 

He has the urge to compliment Luke on it, _oh, clever boy you are_ , but chooses different words instead.

 

“If… yer trying to— _mhh_ —! sway me, then you'll be sorely disappointed, Mr Flynn.”

 

He sucks in a sharp breath through his nose.

 

The young man is inexperienced. Not that Jones minds the slight scrape of teeth and messy sucking.

 

He makes himself take shallow thrusts into the mouth engulfing him. Luke makes a sound of either discomfort or surprise, brows knit together, but he only opens his mouth wider to take him in fully. The pleasure building in his groin is all heat and pressure.

 

Luke shifts his weight from one knee to the other. A flush burns in his cheeks.

 

When he takes Jones down to the hilt with swallows that ease him in past the tightness of his throat, lips wrapping around the root of his arousal, a hoarse moan rips from his throat. His hands need to find hold, and they travel down over the slopes of protruding shoulder blades and tug him forward, closer. His fingers slide up into the short hairs at the back of the young man's head, and in response Luke rolls his tongue along the underside of his length.

 

He hums deep in his throat, and Jones inhales sharply at the vibrations of it. All that fills the air is the concupiscent noise of his cock sliding in and out of Luke’s throat and the wet parting sound of Luke’s lips, swallowing him down inch by inch. He comes a moment later, his fingers digging into the back of Luke's neck. The young man swallows with a nasal sound of disgust, and Jones eyes are transfixed on the glistening trail of spit on his chin, before he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

 

Luke’s lips, ruddy and swollen, curl up into a smile.

 

“Are you still not taking me with you?”

* * *

 

**Luke**

There is a tightness in his chest, an emotion he has no name for trying to claw up his throat and past his lips. Luke’s chest constricts. He gazes up at the other man through long lashes, eyes shining with hope.

 

The unfamiliar, salty taste of his is still thick on his tongue. Luke licks his lips absently.

 

But Jones only takes a flask out of the inner pocket of his coat and hands it to him. Luke eyes the content warily and takes a sniff, wrinkling his nose at it.

 

“It’ll get the taste out of yer mouth,” is all Jones says to him.

 

He takes a small sip and stifles a grimace. It tastes a lot like alcohol, of herbs and strong spirits. He hands it back with a shake of his head and a cough.

 

“And?”

 

“Were ye hoping to make me change me mind?”

 

“I was hoping…”

 

There is neither disgust nor contempt in Jones' face. Neither amusement nor curiosity. Luke thinks the slight softening of those eyes could be something akin to sadness.

 

He lets his head fall forward, a resigned smile baring his teeth. From the corner of his eye, he watches Jones tilt his head toward the sky, chest heaving with the last breaths of freedom. The sky is beginning to lighten up. Luke sighs, brushing the hair out of his face to see Jones look at him curiously.

 

“I guess this is goodbye then.”

 

His voice sounds ragged, and it must have an effect on the other man because he suddenly tenses, mouth is drawn into a severe, thin line. He takes a step forward, and then another, until their feet are nearly touching.

 

“If I was to take ye with me, given time, ye will come to resent me. I am not as good as ye keep tellin' yerself, Mr Flynn, nor do I want to be.”

 

“You don’t know that,” he bites out, feeling that nameless emotion creep into his chest and rise into his throat. He doesn't falter when Jones walks past him.

 

With a harsh, angry snarl his hands find the sleeve of Jones cloak. Luke’s fingers tremble where they are curled around the fabric.

 

“There’s still time- the sky’s still dark.”

 

“I would've thought ye to have grown past yer wishful thinkin'. Five years is a long time to be clinging to _hope_."

 

The disappointment in Luke's stomach proves stronger than his will to speak. Jones wrenches his arm out of his hold. He seems to have become a lot more generous about making physical contact outside of sex. Luke can’t say he minds, though it doesn’t last long. Neither of them speaks. Jones' touch lingers for only a moment, the tentacle of his index curling around Luke's wrist before he turns his back to him and walks away without another word.

 

Luke’s heart aches in his chest.

 

Jones doesn’t _want_ him. It isn’t a matter of whether Luke would be happy or not. Jones doesn’t want to take him with because he doesn’t want him there. He should have known whatever feelings he has would never be recuperated. Jones doesn’t love him any more than he wants for Luke to be come with him.

 

_I’ve grown fond of the sound of yer heartbeat._

 

They are only words, and Jones knows how to use them, how to make them hurt and cut as deep as the blade of a knife. How to make Luke believe and do as he says. How to keep him close and when to push him away again.

 

He looks up to the beginning of dawn, at Jones standing there with his back to him and wishing he could somehow make him see what he wouldn’t give to come with him, and knows that he can’t. The sky is fading from black to blue and in the distance, he can see the silhouette of the _Dutchman_. The sight makes Luke's heart sing. He takes a deep breath, gathering what little bravery he still has in him. Jones' foot nearly touches the water when Luke remembers something important he had wanted to ask him.

 

“Wait,” he moves forward to grasp the man's sea changed hand and watches him flinch violently at the touch. “I'm sorry-- I'm sorry I never asked you how you've been. We haven't talked or seen each other in a long time, and I know were not... close... but I want to know. How you are-- if your heart's safe. You didn't give me the chance to ask the last time we saw each other.”

 

His grip loosens and falls away when he is sure Jones isn't going to flee. Jones only turns to look at him over his shoulder, and down at his clawed hand, opening and closing it, lost in thought. He seems to contemplate whether or not he should tell him, and when he does Luke can’t keep in his sigh of relief.

 

“‘tis safe.” Jones eyes linger on the place at Luke’s chest where his heart is beating steadily but firmly against his ribs. His hand twitches, as though wanting to reach for him. He doesn't. “Hidden inside a chest that cannot be buried.”

 

For the span of a heartbeat, time slows and stands still. Luke, startled, staring wide-eyed, touches a hand to the place where he cut out his own heart a long time ago. His heart feels heavy in his _chest_ , and he realizes then, suddenly, that his heart is not his at all, but rather of the man standing there, watching him. An intense feeling of love rushes to the crevices of his heart, to the base of his throat and to the root of his lungs, and with every beat it spread, like the blood in his veins. His throat feels too tight. Color burns in his cheeks.

 

The water at their feet rises and Jones is moving forward, through the waves crashing on shore. The sea doesn’t unsettle his clothing at all, but rather it moves around him and through him. Luke can barely see him against the blinding light of the sun rising on the horizon.

 

“ _Why?_ Why me?”

 

But Jones doesn’t look at him again. He is submerged to the hip in water, where he can’t hear him. Not that Luke would have needed him to say what they both know _\--that he had saved his life once and would do it again._ And maybe that says more about Jones than it does about him, but he doesn't have time to dwell on it. He rushes forward with his fingers outstretched and feet diving into the water, reaching for him, but as if Jones had seen him a wall of water collides with Luke's chest and he is thrown back onto solid ground _._ He shuts his eyes, trying to catch his breath again.

 

When he opens them with the sting of the salt of the ocean, Jones is gone.

* * *

 

The man materializes out of nowhere in the shadows of the small shack, his movements quiet as he climbs through the solemn window on the east side, open by a nudge. Dimmed lights shine through the broken glass. He slips inside, the soles of his feet touching the ground with barely any noise.

 

A short sniff in the air fills his lungs with dust and the scent of spilled alcohol. The man wrinkles his nose and searches the room for what—who he came for. There are footsteps in the next room, and three more steps should bring the owner to the door. The man bolts back for the window, pressing flat against the wall beside it when the door opens and a young man steps inside.

 

The sound of metal hinges fills the room as a drawer is opened. There are more footsteps, and the sound of a clothes falling to the floor, and then the man chances a glance at the other.

 

Sitting inches from him on the bed and wearing only cotton trousers is an older Luke Flynn. His informant hadn’t been lying then. The last he saw of Flynn, he was lying in a puddle of his own blood, having died on the ship he had gone to such lengths to obtain. but there he is alive and a fair bit older than the last time he saw him.

 

His smile goes unseen by the young man who has closed his eyes and is sleeping there on the bed.

 

Oh, fate _was_ interesting.

 

* * *

 

When Luke opens his eyes and finds his vision cloaked in darkness, feeling the fabric of the blindfold on his eyelids, he knows he is not in his bed anymore. His head hurts. Sweat burns at his temples as it dries and the blood is hot at the side of his head where he had been knocked unconscious.

 

“ _Fuck_... Where am I?”

 

The pull of the rope is rough. It scrapes, ever so lightly, against the skin of his wrists with each breath, and although Luke doesn't try to move, within moments it is pulled as tight as he can bear-- and at his gasp even tighter.

 

That's how he knows he isn't alone either.

 

“Lemme go, or--”

 

His head falls forward. The ropes are tight. Luke grinds his teeth and struggles for a moment. All he can hear is his heart—no, Jones heart—beating so loud that he half-thinks his captor can hear it, too.

 

“Fucking untie me!”

 

The ropes are too tight. The way his arms are pulled stiffly behind his back, each knot cuts deep into his skin. As the pain builds, he bites back the urge to ask for some form of relief. _I can take whatever they try and do to me._

 

Then there is a voice, and Luke thinks it sounds distantly familiar.

 

“My, Mr Flynn... you have a big mouth for someone who is supposed to be dead.”

 

He is motionless, eyes following the sound of feet as the other man paces around him, slow, deliberate steps that are meant to put him on edge. It is working-- he can't stop his body from shaking. The man’s voice never changes tone or cadence as he murmurs, breath brushing hotly against the shell of Luke’s ear, “I'll admit, I never expected you to do what you did,” Hands running over him, tracing the path of the rope around his wrists, “though your actions did set our progress back quite a bit.”

 

“ _Ngh--_ ”

 

Without a warning, Luke's wrists are pulled painfully high and, again, he makes an involuntary noise of pain.

 

“Of all the disappointments I've had, your fathers betrayal was by far the most disappointing.”

 

He grits his teeth, waiting.

 

“It was clever, really, to trade places with him— put your own heart in the chest and keep his in I assume your own? Much like chess, wouldn't you say; the way a castle can save a king by switching places with it.”

 

Luke huffs out a breath.

 

“It seems I sorely underestimated you, Mr Flynn.”

 

“It seems to me you are finally at the end of a very short rope,” he snaps back, uncaring whether he will suffer for it.

 

A laugh, mocking and cruel right over his shoulder.

 

“Oh, you are about to find out that I reached the end a long time ago.”

 

He tenses, feels Beckett's hand brush across the length of his arms. The next moment, his kneecaps strike the ground, the sharp edges digging sharply into his skin, though his vision remains plunged in darkness. He blinks his eyes furiously, but the blindfold stays in place. There is a rush of sensation-- like the blood circulating in his hands and the moving ground under him. He is below the deck of a ship, he can tell from the sound of water crashing into the walls of the ship and how the ground moves beneath his bare feet.

 

“There’s no need to fear for you live just yet.”

 

He can't see, and the fist connecting solidly with his stomach has him double over in pain, blue eyes wide with shock. There is a shuffling sound, a breath and a rush of air, and all he can do is blindly jump in a direction he thinks is right-- as another punch, this time in his ribs throws him onto his back. His hands, still tied, feel raw and wet.

 

Something heavy pressed onto Luke's chest and forces the air out of his lungs mercilessly. He struggles, bucking his hips at the foot holding him down with all of his strength.

 

“Get off me!”

 

The next thing he feels is pain as his stomach is suddenly burning hot. Such pain, burning bright into his skin. The sickening smell of burning flesh fills his nose and Luke tastes bile in the back of his throat. He wants to claw at it, wants to curl in on himself and wrap his arms around his stomach to try and shield the room from it. He screams, but the burning metal only presses down harder. Take it, he can take it. But the heat is unbearable and the smell even worse.

 

He is being branded, and the knowledge that it is Beckett doing it is worse than any pain.

 

“ _Stop_ — please, stop-!”

 

The metal is gone then, but there is no reprieve. Luke’s stomach lurches and the acidic taste of vomit fills his mouth. It splashes wetly onto the floor next to him, earning a disgusted sound from his captors.

 

The foot on his chest is gone, too, and Luke is on his feet and running blind for an escape. His bare foot collides with what must be the stairs, and his chin hits hard wood, teeth biting down on his tongue.

 

He tastes blood.

 

“It seems clear there is somebody else I'm supposed to be taking vengeance on, but you being the only one in my possession is-“ He raises his head to look in the direction of Beckett's voice, even if he can’t see him. “nothing but a disappointment for me, because it is only _you_.”

 

He hopes Jack is somewhere other than here and won’t come looking for Luke when he realizes he is gone. It is Jack Beckett wants, not Luke, because although Luke had contributed to Beckett's defeat it was Jack who did it. It is jack and Luke and Jones, too, the other man wants dead, as though the three of them had plotted together, when in reality it had been Luke alone.

 

“How careless of him to leave you unprotected. I would have thought it would be harder to get to you, but alas…”

 

Anger is stronger and more palatable than any pain. He can almost breathe it. He struggles to stand again but before he can there is suddenly a hand around his arm, wrenching him back, and he is pushed back against a wall with such force that he finds himself unable to breathe. It happens so fast, his body doesn't react until he feels the shackles snapping shut around his ankles

 

“There is still a way for me to get what I want,” Beckett says from behind him, too close for comfort.

 

Luke shuts his eyes, trying to catch his breath.

 

“You know, after your death I started to wonder— why would a young boy as you were sacrifice his own life for someone like Jones? Rather curious. I couldn't make sense of it, but then I remembered your outburst that day on the Dutchman, and it suddenly all made sense to me. You _love_ him.”

 

His— _Jones_ ' heart, thumps violently in his chest. Dark brows furrow in anger.

 

_“Like hell I do.”_

 

“People, Mr Flynn, are only motivated by two things in life. One is power, and the other is love, and it is in our nature to fall in love with those who we think of as worthy. And no matter how terrible, how sad and how... sick, we cling to it. It makes us _weak_.”

 

Luke's face twists into a scowl. Blood runs down his chin and drips onto his chest, drawing a path down his skin. It gathers in the curve of his hip and soaks into the hem of his pants. The fabric sticks to him uncomfortably when he moves.

 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. If you’re thinking about using me to get to him-- to get to Jones, then you’re going to be disappointed.”

 

“Jones isn’t who I want. It is about _what_ I want, and what I want is control over the sea.”

 

“I don’t know where the heart is.”

 

“Are you sure of that?”

 

“I _don't_ know,” he says again, hoping the other man doesn't hear the waver in his voice. “I swear.”

 

Beckett doesn’t know he has the heart. As long as Luke is alive, the heart is safe. He has survived until now, has survived Jack and the devil of the sea himself, he can survive a little longer. Long enough until he can break free from his shackles. He is under no illusion that Jones will come for him. Jones doesn’t even know Luke is being held captive. He hopes Jones will come to rescue him, but chances of that happening are grim. He and Jack are more alike than they know. Always looking out for themselves. And Jack, despite their history, will not come for Luke if he has to risk his life and his beloved ship to free him.

 

“He won’t come for me,” he says, his tone full of conviction. A part of him, the part that is still angry at Jones for leaving him, wishes it were true.

 

Beckett hums thoughtfully, before the ropes tying Luke's wrist together are pulled tighter.

 

“I suppose we will find out.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah yes, a real storyline... I enjoy writing Beckett's character and loved him in the movies, although I wanted him dead from beginning to end.  
> Let me know what you think.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess I should've said it at the beginning of the last chapter. Heads up-- there will be lots of gore and a good amount of violence in the coming chapters.
> 
> Enjoy reading.

In the beginning, he spits insults through clenched teeth and pulls at his chains, until the pain becomes bearable and he lets himself fall.

 

Hours turn to days of falling in and out of consciousness, only to wake to the feeling of pain burning in his flesh. He stays chained to the wall of the ship, inhaling deep breaths to remain conscious for longer each time the sound of footsteps fills the space. He keeps count of them and comes to the realization that Cutler Beckett doesn't come to him alone.

 

Nor does he hold back on his abuse of the whip. Luke can't see him, but he doesn’t have to to know the man is watching as the lashes come down on Luke's back, again and again until Luke can’t stand on his feet any longer. Beckett would never dirty his own hands on someone like him. He only watches and mocks from somewhere in the room.

 

The first time around, Luke had bared his teeth in an amused smile and told him that the lashes from his time onboard the _Dutchman_ had cut deeper than the lashes they tried giving him, and the remark had earned him five more after he had already collapsed.

 

“I think I’m beginning to understand you,” says Beckett, sounding too composed for someone who is watching a young man kneeling beaten and bleeding in his own blood.

 

“Pain isn’t difficult for you to endure at all, is it? No, Jones must have beaten that out of you. You have forgotten how pain feels, maybe you even enjoy it, if those scars are anything to go by.”

 

Hands on Luke's back, running its fingers over the scars there. Luke can tell they are Beckett’s hands by the smoothness of them, soft and free of callouses from lack of manual labor. Those hands have never had the grit of dirt underneath their fingernails, have never had blood on them. Not by their own doing at least. Beckett has only been a murderer by omission, and even though it isn’t murder in the traditional sense, it is still murder.

 

“I can tell we are not going anywhere here.”

 

He still has his loyal pawns. He doesn’t need to do the dirty work for what comes next.

 

Luke’s muscles are cramping from having to stand for such a long time and his skin is muddled with sweat and grime. His clothes are town in places and cling to his skin where the blood has dried.

 

The chains clink together with his movements and the wounds on his back won’t stop bleeding.

 

“It seems as though we will need to be more blunt,” Beckett says, and Luke suddenly is pulled back on his feet, feeling in the same moment the blade of a knife cutting into the bared skin of his throat. “I’m a merciful man, so I’m giving you a last chance to save yourself. You can either tell me where the heart of Davy Jones is, or the good Captain can start collecting your body parts throughout the Caribbean sea, limb by severed limb.”

 

Laughter spills from his lips, unbidden, choked gasps that sound like sobbing. He lets his head fall back, baring his throat further, a despairing grimace baring his bloodied teeth.

 

“Do what you have to,” he croaks, and the words hurts, even though if they do cut his throat, the heart will be safe.

 

The blade at his throat cuts into his flesh, drawing a thin line of blood. Behind the blindfold, Luke closes his eyes, thinking that the end is near…

 

* * *

 

_**Jones** _

Davy Jones moves restlessly about the edges of his quarters, feeling a strangeness in the hollow of his chest, in the spot where his heart once had been.

 

It lurks underneath his skin and cuts through the assuaging sleep.

 

Blood no longer runs through his disfigured body’s veins, in its place running ice water from the seas he has sailed. Only now, there is the shadow of a feeling in the hollow space in him, a tide of emotion reaching him— through the vessel of his heart.

 

Although their physical connection had been severed by distance, the young man still remains anchored in Jones consciousness. It is a strange feeling, to experience someone else’s emotion though never quite feeling it. When Jones had felt Luke’s anger at him, felt the range of emotion flood his soul like a wave filling into an empty cave, he had shuddered at the intensity of it. Such a connection they have, but Jones had ripped himself away, tortured by the experience of such profound feelings.

 

Until now, the young man had not been aware of the heart beating in his breast. It has become a habit for Jones to dive into their connection before sleep took him and for the briefest of moments feel what Luke is feeling in that same moment.

 

There is a stomping of feet from above, his men moving about the ship to fulfill the tasks he had given them once he had returned. A murderous glare had silenced his first mate’s remarks about Jones whereabouts, and the man had contended himself with grinning at his Captain in a way he would not have dared before.

 

But a lot has changed between now and when he pulled a certain boy out of the ocean. It all seems so long ago now…

 

His bulking form collapses onto the bunk in the corner of the room. Water is running along the walls, pouring out of the cracks in the woodwork and running in rivulets along the floorboards. It is damp and cold and lonely in his quarters, and the only reprieve from it is when Jones closes his eyes and concentrates on the connection.

 

—There is nothing there.

 

Jones frowns deeply and tries again, but nothing. He scowls in frustration and tries to rip into their connection, only to feel a void where Luke should have been, but isn't.

 

Panic rises within Jones' chest.

 

_Is he dead?_

 

His tentacles squirm and the room begins to fall apart before his eyes.

 

It it as though Luke had never existed.

 

* * *

 

_**Luke** _

It feels like forever since he has felt the wind on his face, or tasted the salt in the air as he stands next to Jack at the helm, or smelled the decay and rot that is part of the _Dutchman._ It feels like forever since he's been truly free.

 

Freedom...

 

What does that mean to him anymore?

 

Is it laughing with Jack as they narrowly escaped death with staggering amounts of rum and a swearing Gibbs in tow? Or is it lying in the sand by his house and not having to worry about anything? Or-- is it watching the sun rise from the _Dutchman_ as its Captain watches him, feeling of the eyes burning into his back and trying not to smile?

 

It all seems like a distant dream...

 

The skin of his wrists is rubbed raw from where the rope cut deep into his flesh.

 

His hair clings to the sweat on his forehead, droplets of blood running down his temple from the cut on his head. He had been stripped of his clothes, forced to stand bleeding and bare in the darkness of the room. Pain courses through his bloodstream, thicker than the blood in his mouth, thicker than anger.

 

“I think I know how you managed to survive for so long on Jones' ship. You are quite enduring, aren’t you? But no matter...”

 

Luke exhales a breath, setting his jaw. He braces himself for what comes next.

 

“Once you know what a man is made of, you know how to break him. And you,” the tip of a blade is dragged across the old scar underneath his collarbone, right over his heart. “you are made of scars.”

 

Terror rips through him, and Luke is writhing in his restraints and struggling against the blade cutting into his skin, trying to break free, _because how can Beckett know, he couldn’t have found out._

 

“You know, your scars are as much a part of you as the heart that pumps the blood through your veins. You and I are alike in that. The past-- our scars _make_ us who we are.”

 

The blade cuts deep through skin and muscle, and Luke's insides constrict at the pain, his throat feeling too tight for him to scream. His heart thunders in his chest. His pulse races.

 

“You cut out your heart and thought you could sacrifice yourself in _his_ place. Dying for an unrequited love. But that scar has healed, and you are alive.”

 

Blood spills hotly over his skin.

 

Luke shakes in his chains, clawing after his consciousness as the pain begins to subside. Beckett makes a sound that is either of disappointment or disgust, but is interrupted by the shouting from somewhere over their heads. There is cannon fire and the sound of splintering wood as the ship shudders with the impact. A tremor runs up his leg.

 

“ _Ah_. At last.”

 

Luke, barely conscious, wants to call out, to tell whoever has come for him to leave, but the words die in his throat. _Help me_ , he thinks, and in the same breath, _please don’t leave me_.

 

With wet strands of hair falling into his face, even as he chokes and splutters on another mouthful of blood, he still hears the steps coming for him, the thud of every other step revealing its owners identity to him.

 

And such hope rushes in, unbearably strong that, for a short moment, Luke allows his heart to soar for.

 

More present than hope though is the knowledge that he won’t have to die, that Jones has really come for him. His lips part but make no sound, and the moment is broken when with a last pull at the chains he falls into blackness...

* * *

 

**Jones**

It is not the place Jones is focused on when he steps below the weather deck, but rather it is the young man lying unconscious and naked in the grip of Cutler Beckett.

 

His wet boot squelches as he takes a heavy step forward, the sea changed claw of his hand snapping shut with it. Storm grey eyes are transfixed on the blood, the sheer amount of blood that trails down the young man’s chin from the scarlet-stained lips he has kissed.

 

“I was beginning to think you would not come to retrieve your _pet_ , though it looks like our dear Mr Flynn is no longer with us.”

 

The small man steps forward and pulls Luke’s head up by the fist in his hair.

 

“‘is his soul I came for. It belongs ta me,” Jones intones quietly, holding off on the brink of murderous rage, kept at bay by only the most ruthless self control.

 

Beckett's mouth splits into a smile of malice.

 

“Mmh, but what could his soul be worth to you? Broken as it is.”

 

He yanks Luke’s head up further to expose a long stretch of skin, marred by scarring that had not been there before. On his hip, a red mark like that of a cattle-brand. The initials _E. I. C_. staring back at Jones mockingly.

 

“I enjoyed doing that,” Beckett says and yanks at the young man’s hair a little more, as if to emphasize the words. “Did you enjoy it, too, leaving your mark on him, I wonder…”

 

It is a pathetic attempt at vengeance against him, from a man who prides himself on his ability to read his enemies. But to Jones, who has surrounded himself by ugly and disfigured things since he began his own transformation, the scars mean nothing.

 

He himself, black soul and tentacles and with the unspeakable things he committed, has no scars on his body. Immortality would not allow them, though he cannot know how Luke himself will feel upon their discovery, when he sees how much of those scars would remain.

 

But that is a matter for later.

 

Jones has heard enough of the man talk. He takes another heavy step closer, and in Beckett's hand he can see the glint of steel at Luke's throat. Jones tilts his head and raises a hairless brow at him.

 

“Ah, I'm afraid if you want him _alive_ , then I will need something of yours in return. A trade, if you will.”

 

The man's choice of words makes his lips twitch in a sneer. The tentacles of his beard writhe in frustration. Frustration and rage are a deadly combination, and his sword slides out of its sheath in a crude movement, cutting through the bone of the small man’s wrist swiftly. The pained scream goes unheard, as does the opening of the door behind him. Jones moves forward with purpose, and the man stumbles backwards, hands searching for the blade he has been holding in his hand. A slash across a pale throat, and Cutler Beckett fall to his knees with a wet gurgle from his mouth. Blood squirts forth between the fingers clawing uselessly at his throat, and then he moves no longer.

 

If he still had blood running through his veins then it would rush with the excitement of killing a man such as Cutler Beckett.

 

“... I didn' think... you'd come...”

 

He bends to curl a hand around Luke's arm. In the back of his mind he absently notes that the young man's skin is slick with blood, and that the wounds on his back are bleeding still.

 

“Did ye forget,” Jones tells him, heaving him onto his shoulder with barely any effort. “I own yer soul, and with it yer life. If ye are to die, it will be by me hand, and not anyone elses'.”

 

With that, he stomps up the sodden stairs and marches across the fighting on deck, through the thick smoke rising around them and to the mast of the ship. He will not waste his breath to order a retreat-- his crew can do what they will to any men still alive.

 

He has what he came for.

 

The body slumped over his shoulder struggles weakly. A groan sounds where once his ear had been.

 

“Can ye stand by yerself?”

 

“Yeah... Can you--?”

 

He sets him down non-too-gently, watching as Luke sways dangerously on his feet the moment he touches the deck, before grabbing hold of the mast to remain standing. Jones is about to open his mouth and tell him to grab a hold of his arm when from the smoke a man in navy uniform runs toward them, sword held in hand and ready to strike.

 

His tentacles flex in anticipation, taking a heavy step forward.

 

In a shuffling movement of feet, Luke twists around with _Jones_ ' knife in his hand-- taken from him when he had been carrying him over his shoulder-- and slams it brutally into the man's gut. The man wielding his sword splutters, and there is a look of comedic horror on that face until his body hits the ground. Jones watches in morbid fascination as the young man before him drags in heavy breaths through his mouth, the blade slipping from his hands and landing somewhere at their feet.

 

Jones doesn't move to retrieve it. He can feel the blood rushing to his groin. The urge to take him back to his quarters and--

 

“Capt'n!”

 

His first mate steps next to him, rotting teeth revealed in a crooked grin.

 

He acknowledges Luke's presence with a nod of his head and wisely doesn't let his eyes wander below the young man's naval. “Three of ours are wounded. They be needing time to recover, but they'll live.”

 

“Get back to the ship and set a course for the Eleuthera. Have clean water and bandages be brought to me quarters.”

 

“Aye, Capt'n.”

 

The man withdraws back to where there are still fights to be fought, cutting down a man cowering at the railing as he goes.

 

Not hesitating further than has, his blunt fingers find Luke's wrist and tug him towards the mast. He ignores the choked gasp at his harsh treatment and pulls the young man after him into the woodwork. It comes naturally, and Jones materializes on the Dutchman as though stepping from the darkened corner of a room.

 

The moon brightened, and illuminated by light Luke's glow a vibrant blue. Feverishly and half-lidded, they look at Jones through a dark fringe of hair.

 

“You--”

 

His eyes roll back. He slumps forward.

 

Jones catches him around the waist and heaves him onto his shoulder with a grunt. Luke must have gained some weight in their time apart. He is heavier than Jones remembers him being, but and after a long moment of steadying himself he stomps onward with the man's full weight on his back.

 

“... thank you... for a moment there I thought...” His cough is a wet gurgle that splatters onto Jones' shoulder in the form of blood and sputum.

 

Jones only scoffs in annoyance, though he doesn't say anything.

 

“Sorry... my stomach-- everything hurts.”

 

“I'm surprised yer still _living_ , let alone able to talk.”

 

“I can shut up if... if you want.”

 

“Ye should keep talkin',” he says as he pushes the door to his quarters open with his arm. “I need ta know yer still conscious.”

 

He crosses the room with five thumping steps and drops Luke onto of his bunk. The mattress sags where one of the beams has broken, but the young man doesn't utter a word of discomfort.

 

He sits with his knees bent against the wall, unashamed of his nudity and watching Jones through his lashes, barely conscious.

 

He looks a mess, and if it wasn't for the shape of his mouth and the expression on his face, Jones would not have recognized him. There is hardly an inch of skin that isn't covered in blood, and at his side above his hip blood spills freely onto the sheets.

 

Next to Jones bunk stand a bucket with water and clean bandages, as ordered. Beside that are clothes.

 

Jones pulls up a chair and wrings out the cloth from the bucket. His hand touches the source of the spill, and when his fingers encounter torn flesh Luke's breath hitches. The deepest of the cuts on his body, it will need to be sown before it can be bandaged.

 

“Why didn't you tell me Beckett was alive?” Luke asks quietly after a moment.

 

From a drawer in his desk, Jones withdraws needle and thread. In his peripheral vision he sees Luke swallow hard, and watches his throat work convulsively, nostrils flaring as he takes a deep breath.

 

The muscles in Luke's jaw clench with the first touch of the needle. His skin jumps. Jones doesn't try to be gentle as he pulls needle and thread through skin.

 

“Are you going to answer me? I could've helped. You didn't even give me a chance-- _ngh_!”

 

“Ye still haven' changed. Yer as loud-mouthed as before.”

 

“I'm not loud mouthed-- _argh_!”

 

Jones' mouth quirk into a smirk. He watches as Luke's hips buck into the air and away from his hand, brows drawn together in pain. His breaths come staggered, but as his muscles bunch to push him up from where he sits, the claw of Jones' hand comes down on his abdomen.

 

“Stop! It fucking hurts--”

 

“Hold still, or I will make ye hurt triple-fold.”

 

“I can't...”

 

More coughs wreck his body as blood trickles down his chin. He chokes on breaths that only barely make it out of his chest. His eyes are shut tightly.

 

Above them, the sound of his crew returning and conversation erupting, though the subject eludes Jones.

 

He finishes his handiwork, glancing up at Luke to gauge his expression. He is still awake, though tears are spilling down his face.

 

Jones' thumb swipes over the burn scar on his stomach, and Luke's reaction is to twist out of his grip and towards the edge of the bunk. Jones' eyes narrow a fraction, the corner of his lip turns upwards in a knowing smirk.

 

“Don't,” Luke snaps, a palm covering the markings burned into his skin.

 

An ugly sob fills the space between them, and Luke's shoulders shake with it. He swears once, and again, his other fist colliding with the nearest wall.

 

“Fuck!”

 

Jones watches his outburst indifferently.

 

The movement bares Luke's back to him, and with it the cuts and bruises tightly winding around every inch of his body, twitching, bleeding still. It comes close to what he had suffered aboard the _Dutchman_ , though at the time he had been part of the crew through enslavement, and therefore could not die.

 

That he is still breathing after the ordeal with Cutler Beckett is a mystery to Jones.

 

“Settle down,” he says, slowly running out of patience to watch the young man ruin his bunk by spilling any more blood. “I need to see to tha mess on yer back, if ye don't want to keep any more of Beckett's memoirs.”

 

“Leave me alone. I can take care of myself.”

 

“Yes, I saw,” Jones remarks, curling a tentacle around Luke's arm and wrenching him back onto the bed and pushing him flat onto his stomach.

 

Luke kicks at him, and Jones painfully twists his arm behind his back. He sneers at him, then looks to the lashes on Luke's back. Each deeper than the last, they cut through muscle and skin with such depth that Jones can see the beginnings of bone through the torn flesh before him.

 

The sight makes him regret to not have drawn out the death of the man responsible.

 

“Ye look an ugly mess,” Jones says, touching a tentacle to the deepest of the cuts unhesitatingly. He hears Luke suck in a breath. “but yer concern is unwarranted. Whatever scars ye will have don't concern me.”

 

Luke laughs, a dry wheeze that barely makes it out of his mouth.

 

“Okay,” he says, going limp against him. A shaking breath exhaled into the cotton sheets, and Luke sags into the mattress. “Okay...”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those wanting to read more of Jack-- don't worry, he'll be back. Next chapter, maybe...


	5. The Wager

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some Jack to brighten everyone's day!  
> Oh, and Will and Elizabeth, too.

The young man talks in his sleep. Of discovering underwater caves and long sunken shipwrecks. Of a ship with black sails. He dreams of all kinds of unremarkable things. Jones knows this because he once found the boy asleep outside of his quarters, one early morning when the crew had been asleep still, mumbling about Sparrow in his dreams and then grimacing like something had left a bad taste in his mouth. He had gotten five lashes for falling asleep on duty, and Jones had listened to the each pained grunt in the privacy of his quarters, a safe distance away.

 

But no matter the distance he put between them, that insufferable, stubborn fool always found a way to get close again, even when Jones had all but abandoned him on an island far away from him.

 

Drool is seeping into the cotton of his sheets and Jones' eyes follow the wet trail down the young man's chin with riveted attention. It is such a small, _human_ thing...

 

Luke mutters something unintelligible, pressing his nose into the pillow. He doesn't wake. The crew, too, is for now asleep in their bunks. It will be some time before the sun rises.

 

“'ones... ... 'lone... I'm...”

 

Jones can imagine what the words would look like on those lips, spoken perhaps in a harsh tone dripping with anger. He can imagine, too, the waver in his voice as it breaks at the last syllable. Or maybe it would crack and the words would flow like blood from his mouth, pitiful and small. Maybe he would drag different words from the young man's mouth when Jones takes him up against the mast.

 

A welcome image, that, but it is not to be for now. Jones knows that the young man has some measure of resentment for him. He knows this because he once stood in the same spot Luke is standing in at the moment. He once felt what Luke is feeling right now. Abandonment and anger are dangerous a mix to have in you.

 

“... no... you--...”

 

Sometimes Jones half-wants to hear him say them. These words teeming in Luke's mouth. Other times he thinks he would say them back, if he still believed in such. But the words wouldn’t fit in his mouth even if Jones wanted to say something so worthless. He would not be able to make them sound sincere. Sincerity doesn't belong in a mouth like his. The words would taste wrong. Lose what little worth they have with time and quickly become nothing.

 

The sound of retching fills the quiet of night.

 

Jones hasn't even noticed him move. He looks up to see Luke, pale and shivering and heaving, on his knees in front of the bed, a hand on on his stomach. His skin is nearly translucent in the shine of the lantern. Jones stands and presses a cool hand to the back of the young man's neck. It's only then that he is reminded of Luke’s anger earlier—but he doesn't wrench himself away.

 

“Breathe,” is all he says, when the heaves subside into coughs.

 

Luke wearily rests his forehead on Jones' knee. He doesn't look up. The cuts on his back have started to bleed again from the abrupt movement, though not heavily so. If Luke is aware of his nakedness, his face doesn't give anything away. He doesn't blush as furiously as he used to, nor does he shy away from him as Jones half-expected him to.

 

His beard ripples. The tentacle of his index slides across Luke's jaw, forcing his chin up.

 

“Look at me. Are ye ill?”

 

“No, I'm--”

 

Luke gags. He tastes bile on the back of his tongue. His stomach roils as a wave of nausea threatens to pull him under. His hands shape into fists and a shudder passes through him. “... I don't feel well.”

 

“What did Beckett do to ye on his ship?”

 

“I don't know... I wasn't conscious half of the time. And when is was awake he would ask me questions about the heart and you a-and Jack... and then he would burn me, over and over again... _don't_ \--”

 

He is pushing at the hand that is touching the mark on his stomach, and a sick gush of something like bile has him yank his arm out of his Jones' hold.

 

“Just-- don't,” he says again, jaw clenching against the terrible urge to strike out. He looks down at himself, the faint traces of dried blood that still cling to his bared skin. It isn't nausea he feel then, but shame rushing into his face.

 

For a moment Jones' brows rise up and he looks like Luke has physically struck him. Then he rids his face of any emotion. He is indifferent again, and Luke can feel the shame color his cheeks, because Jones has been startlingly gentle with him. He doesn't deserve his anger anymore than Luke deserved to be abandoned on an island for five years.

 

He averts his eyes and quietly says, “I'm sorry about your bunk... I bled all over your sheets, and your coat...”

 

“What could a splash more of your blood matter to me?”

 

There is the slightest tensing of Luke’s shoulders, and then his body is shaking with breathless laughter. He wipes a hand down his face and makes a sound of disgust at the blood and grime sticking to his fingers. Jones doesn't say anything.

 

“I look like shit,” he says, rubbing at a particularly large spot of blood on his thigh, but all it does is smear it. He raises his head to gauge Jones' expression.

 

Jones' eyes give no hint of anger or longing, or anything that has to do with feeling. The man's face is dark in the shadows that stretch around the room, and Luke aware he is still kneeling next to the bed, utterly nude.

  
A shiver runs down his spine.

 

“You wouldn't have any clothes I can borrow?”

 

A snort, and if anything else Jones looks amused now. He jerks his head towards the pile of clothing on his desk, and Luke is already reaching for them when he remembers how filth he is. His eyes fall onto the bucket of water standing next to the bed. If even possible, the flush in his face darkens. He glances up at Jones and back at the bucket, clenching and unclenching his hand.

 

“Could you...?”

 

As if sensing his embarrassment, Jones stands and swiftly crosses the the room to sit at his organ, back turned to him to give him some measure of privacy. He doesn't know why he suddenly feels the need for it, but the thought of washing himself while Jones watches is too intimate a thing to do. Maybe it is because Jones would be watching without the distraction of touching him, or maybe it is just that Luke doesn't want for Jones to see how badly he is shaking, though he probably already had, or maybe he doesn't want to have Jones look at the cuts and scars on his body any longer.

 

Up on deck the crew is starting to come alive. The shuffling of feet and shouting can be heard from overhead. Luke feels excitement tingle under his skin at stepping outside and feeling the sun on his face after days of torture in an windowless room.

 

He wrings out the cloth and slowly starts to clean the blood off his thighs and abdomen. The cuts there are shallow and don't need bandages, though he still hisses at the pain at scrubbing the blood off. When his skin is rubbed raw and he is sure there are no traces of Cutler Beckett on him he moves on to his arms and chest.

 

The cuts across his torso are bad, deep lines that look like someone had cut through him and then put him back together. The lashes on his back are worse. If he twists around, he can almost feel the whip on his back all over again.

 

He shuts his eyes at the pain and scrubs them clean, too. When he opens his eyes again, Jones is watching him intently.

 

Luke almost snaps at him to turn around, almost uses the sheets to cover himself with. He shifts uncomfortably, washing out the blood and trying not to lose his composure. The water in the bucket has turned a rusted red color, and he hasn't been aware of how much he is bleeding until then. His brows furrow and he reaches back a hand to feel for the source of the spill. His stomach twists when his fingers encounter torn flesh, and his lips part to drag in a trembling breath.

 

_Oh._

 

He flinches at the sound of a chair scraping backward.

 

Jones' hand curls around his upper arm and bodily pulls him up onto the bunk. Luke doesn't argue with him. He does as he is told and turns around onto his stomach. From his peripheral vision he sees Jones pull something out of the inner pocket of his coat. A second later there is the faint scent of herbs, and something cool touching his skin as Jones begins to rub some kind of ointment onto his back. Neither of them speaks, but he can feel the corner of his mouth tug into the semblance of a smile. It won't heal any of the deeper lashes. Scars would remain, but he is grateful for it for a different reason.

 

When Jones is finished, Luke quickly pulls on his clothes. He has to roll up the legs of his trousers three times to keep from tripping on them, but the waist is snug enough and he has a long sleeve shirt to match it. The sleeves fall past his knuckles, but the color is a deep burgundy and Luke is relieved to be able to feel like himself again. Through the process of getting dressed he is aware of Jones' eyes on his back. His eyes are on him so strongly that Luke can almost feel them go down the length of him.

 

Luke drags a hand through his hair, fingers catching in the curls because it is so aggravatingly messy.

 

Then, a sudden crash rocks the entire ship. He stumbles, the back of his knees hitting the bed and falling backward. His eyes find Jones to see the man stomp past him and out the door. Luke pushes himself up and follows after him.

 

On deck, the crew of the _Flying Dutchman_ are looking just as lost as him.

 

“What's this?”

 

“We don' know Capt'n, fog's too heavy. They came outta nowhere!”

 

It is still early morning and the sun is rising on the horizon. Fog hangs so low it almost touches the water. They can't see where the other ship is, and the second hit sends Luke tumbling forward into Jones' broad back. The man never even moves in his stance. Luke looks around quickly. Several of the crew around him lost their footing.

 

Jones squints his eyes at the open water as though he can see through the mist, and smiles. It's an ugly, menacing thing, his lipless mouth pulled back to expose yellowed teeth. Luke instinctively knows that whatever it is, it isn't going to be pretty.

 

“He's got more spine than he lets on,” Jones says, his barnacle-slathered claw coming to rest on the rail. “that _Sparrow_.”

 

_Jack? What is he doing here?_

 

Luke tears his eyes away from the fog and mist. His stomach drops. He has a feeling that Jack's arrival is not on his behalf. Bad luck follows Jack wherever he goes.

 

In his head he pictures looking at the remains of a drowning _Pearl_ , no longer a ship but a wreck of splintered wood and destruction after the Krakken had pulled Jack down into the depths of the sea.

 

_It won't happen again._

 

“How do you know it's Jack?” he asks, and at Jones' indignant stare he hastily adds, “Captain.”

 

No answers is given for no answer is needed as the black sails of the Pearl become visible to everyone else on deck. The ship manifests out of the fog, but stays at a safe distance away from the _Dutchman_.

 

“What's he want, you think?” Maccus asks next to Luke, who looks up at the man a little startled. Maccus bares his teeth at him in a pleased grin.

 

“It's obvious, isn't it? It's Flynn he's lookin' for. What else could it be? Sparrow's a fool, but even a fool doesn't chase down the devil 'imself,” Koleniko says, withdrawing his sword in a crude movement that makes Luke's stomach flip. “We'll be putting him an' his ship back to an earlygrave!”

 

“No.”

 

All eyes of the crew are on him. Jones' doesn't look at him, but his head is turned towards Luke as though he is waiting for an explanation. He knows that if he doesn't do something and doesn't do it fast there will be blood. It doesn't matter who's blood it is, Luke doesn't want it on his hands.

 

“Let me go and talk to him.”

 

“No. Yer not to leave the ship,” Jones' eyes are narrowed to slits, the tentacles of his beard tense. “Yer to stay in me quarters until I say otherwise.”

 

“Just let me go see him!”

 

“Did ye forget, I am still yer Captain, and ye'd be wise to do as yer _told_.”

 

“You're not _my_ Captain because I'm no longer part of your crew, or did you forget-- you abandoned my on an island for five years!”

 

“If ye value yer life ye should know yer place, or I will be putting you back up against the mast, and this time I will be holding the whip!”

 

“Go ahead! You can whip me after I talk with Jack.”

 

Shocked voices run through the crew, a noise that is unexpected and expected at once. The men gathered around all watch with unease as the two men glare at each other, and they are all suddenly reminded that the _Dutchman_ is very much a living thing as its Captain steps forward with a heavy, commanding step that makes the ship groan in response. They all look from the ship's Captain to the young man standing there with his chin tilted up in a possibly suicidal action. Jones' has killed many men for many a thing, and they all watch eagerly for what will or won't happen next.

 

“The Dutchman's Captain will not let anyone leave the ship until he allows it,” Jones tells him, and Luke is about to speak again when the tension of Jones' tentacles suddenly abates, and the man is making little effort to hide the fury in his eyes.

 

There is an edge to his tone that tells him that this isn't up for argument. Luke will either do as he says, or he will be put in line.

 

The men are withdrawing their weapons, jeering and laughing. Luke opens his mouth and shuts it again with a quiet click of teeth. He looks at Jones pleadingly, but the man sneers and turns away from him.

 

“Take Mr Flynn to my quarters, and do not let him out until I return.”

 

There is a second in which Maccus looks from Jones to Luke, obviously uneasy, before he nods and grabs a struggling Luke and pulls him away.

 

“Don't do this. Please-- Maccus, let me go! Just let me go talk to him!”

 

Luke is led down the stairs and back to Jones' quarters, and desperation presses heavily against his breastbone, because how will he live with himself if Jack dies because of him? He will he live with knowing Jack is dead and Luke could have saved him? He just has to-- He has to--

 

Luke slams his elbow back, breaking Maccus' nose with a sickening crack and twisting around to run as fast as he can. He is up the stairs and outside within seconds, and someone is shouting his name. Some of the men see him and run to catch up with him, even as he jumps onto the offside of the ship.

 

He turns his head in time to meet Jones' eyes, the betrayal in them like a physical thing tearing into him, and then he is diving overboard into the water.

 

He doesn't come up for breath until he has put enough distance between himself and the _Dutchman_ , and more importantly its Captain and him.

* * *

 

It is Jack who offers him his hands and pulls him onboard. He looks at Luke like he is back from the dead all over again, and Luke doesn't push him away when he slings an arm around his shoulders in a a hug.

 

He opens his mouth, closes it, and holds onto Jack as though his life depends on it.

 

Jack holds him to his chest, and Luke fits with him just like he did when he was a child. He can smell rum and gunpowder on him, and when he speaks his name Luke can barely stop himself from sagging against the other man in relief.

 

“I thought you were dead, luv. I really did,” Luke's chest constricts painfully at hearing Jack's voice again for the first time in so long. Next to them, Gibbs claps Luke on the shoulder and starts barking out orders to the crew.

 

“How did you find me?”

 

“I went looking for you just like I promised I would, although you didn't make it easy on me. Luckily--” He pulls his an old compass out of the folds of his coat and dangles it in Luke's face, smiling, his capped teeth shining gold. “I have this.”

 

Luke blinks up at him and at the compass. His fingers itch to reach out and take it in his hand and see where it would lead him. Jack really must have wanted to find him, or else the compass wouldn't have worked and he wouldn't be standing here.Luke can feel his mouth split into a smile.

 

He doesn't take the compass.

 

“You look relatively unharmed from where I'm standing. Beckett didn't catch you after all, then, seeing as you were on the _Dutchman_ with the vile squidface, aye?”

 

For a second he wants to tell Jack everything, but the words that leave his mouth are different ones.

 

“Jack, what are you doing here?”

 

At that the older man separates himself from Luke and averts his eyes. He shifts nervously on his booted feet, the beads in his hair clicking softly. The sound would have been comforting once, but all it does is making Luke's brows furrow. With a ringed hand, Jack waves over to the man walking towards them, and just like that Luke knows why he is here.

 

“Jack was kind enough to burrow me his ship so I can free my father.”

 

It takes effort not to roll his eyes.

 

“I was hoping I would never see you again,” Luke says by way of a greeting.

 

“Believe me, the feeling is mutual.”

 

In the last five years Luke has caught up in height with the other man, and when he steps up to him he doesn't have to raise his chin anymore to meet his eyes. Turner looks like he is just noticing his growth too, and his brown eyes look him over like he has never seen him before. Luke can't stop the smug grin that creeps over his face.

 

Turner frowns at him.

 

“My father is still bound to the Dutchman, and I intent to keep my promise to free him.”

 

“And what does that have to do with me?”

 

“Can I count on you to stay out of my way, or will I have to look over my shoulder to make sure you don't stab me in the back when I find the heart?”

 

Jack, who has been watching them from the side, opens his mouth as if he wants to say something, but thinks better of it. _Desperate times, desperate measures_. And Will Turner is a desperate man.

 

“If it's the heart you're after, you'll be disappointed.”

 

For a split second Luke can see all hope drain from Turner's expression, but he recovers quickly and narrows his eyes at him. Luke would feel sorry for him if he didn't dislike him so.

 

“What do you mean by that? What happened to it?” he asks, and next to him Jack looks like is wondering the same thing. Luke is suddenly reminded that Jack hasn't kept his end of the bargain, and that Jones isn't a man who forgives easily. He is after the heart, too, though he is being smarter about it than Turner.

 

“You really think I'd tell you?”

 

“Jones press-ganged my father into service!”

 

“He gave him a choice to either live and serve on his ship or die like he would have if Jones hadn't found him! Your father made his choice, and he is going to have to live with it just like everyone else.”

 

With an angry shout Luke is abruptly hefted off the ground by a clenched fist around the collar of his shirt. Jack moves to put a restraining arm on Turner's shoulder, but the young man doesn't let it stop him.

 

The desperation behind it is all too familiar to Luke. He has been that desperate once. It isn't the same as cutting out your own heart and dying, but the desperation here is the same. Whether Turner knows it or not, Luke understands it better than anybody else.

 

He can see the sheer frustration in Turner's face as he searches for an argument, an out, a reason to force the answer out of him. Luke doesn't move. His arms hang limp by his side, and he looks at Turner with an open expression on his face, hoping for it to calm him down.

 

When it doesn't look like Turner is going to put him back on his feet until Luke gives hima reason to, he opens his mouth and says, “If you put me down, I'll help you.”

 

Turner laughs at him, but there is no humor in it.

 

“You? You're going to help me? You have no reason to help me. You tried to stop me before.”

 

“I have my reasons,” he says, and watches as confusion settled across Turner's face. After a second in which Jack squeezes Turner's shoulder, Luke's feet are touching the deck again.

 

He rubs a hand over the spot where the fabric chaffed his skin.

 

“We both made promises. I'm not going to break my promise to Jones any more than you're going to break your promise to your old man.”

 

Turner makes a sound that is part incredulous and part doubtful. His eyes flick to the Dutchman at Luke's back and to Jack, who shrugs as if to say he doesn't know what Luke is talking about either.

 

“And why should I trust you?”

 

Luke raises his chin slightly and crosses his arms over his chest.

 

“Because I won't tell you where the heart is, but I can help you free your father. So what choice do you have other than trusting me?”

 

He would never tell Turner where the heart is. There is a part of him that, deep down, hasn't acknowledged that Jones would trust him with something as important as his own heart. He is, in some messed up, indiscernible way more vulnerable than he was when his heart was in the chest.

 

Because you can be resentful and cruel and hateful to all the world, but the one who will be cruelest to you is the one who knows where your most vulnerable places are.

 

Jack crosses over to his side and throws an arms around Luke's shoulders to pull away from Turner to the side of the ship, away from the ears of the crew.

 

“What did you have in mind? You know I'm all-hands-on-deck with whatever you come up with, but how do you propose to get the old squid to let go Bootstrap and not lay waste to my beloved ship as I go on my way?”

 

“I have a plan,” Luke tells him, more to reassure himself than Jack. It's not a lie. He does have a plan to free Bootstrap Bill, but for it to work he would need a lot of luck. And luck is something Luke doesn't have a lot of these days.

 

“Well, I’m sure everything will go according to your plan, considering how indifferent and level-headed you always are in the squid-man's presence.”

 

Luke snorts.

 

“Hey, Jack?”

 

“Yes, luv?”

 

“I need your help.”

* * *

 

Luke wanders the length of the ship with bare feet, musing a hand through his cut-short hair. Jack had jumped at the chance to cut it for him, after he had promised to do it and never did. It reaches past his ears now, but that is long enough for him.

 

He looks out to the  _Dutchman_ and squints his eyes as though he could see its Captain standing at the helm and watching him with the same betrayed look in his eyes like he did as Luke jumped off the ship. Jack and Turner are standing at the helm, talking to each other like he and Luke used to, and the sight makes him sad and angry at the same time.

 

“You're Luke, aren't you?”

 

He turns around to find Elizabeth Swann leaning against the ship's railing next to him. She is beautiful, the sunset turning her hair to blazing gold. Luke nods and braces his arms on the rail.

 

“We once met on the Flying Dutchman, do you remember?”

 

“I asked you about Jack and you told me that he was alive.”

 

How could he forget?

 

Her brown eyes are tired. She must have been through a lot in the past five years. They all have, but you can see how the years have worn her down. He remembers seeing her on the beach of the Isla Cruces, how young and purposeful she had been then. The Elizabeth looking at him now is a mere shadow in comparison.

 

She stares at the pale beginnings of the scar visible underneath his shirt, the white line that stands so in contrast with the otherwise tanned skin. The cuts, courtesy of Culter Beckett, are angry and red and have just begun to heal. She looks at them like she has never seen anything so sick or so horrible, and quickly averts her eyes when Luke catches her looking. Shrugging, he pulls the fabric away to give her a better view of it.

 

“You can look if you want. I don't mind.”

 

She does, and Luke can see pity in her eyes and something else.

 

“Can I ask you something?”

 

Luke smiles at her.

 

“You want to ask me about Jones.”

 

She has the decency to look sheepish.

 

“Jack asked me once, but I didn't have an answer then.”

 

“And now?”

 

She looks at him, listening intently to his every word. She must have loved all the stories of adventure and romance as a child.

 

He looks back to the ship sailing on the horizon. The wood under his fingers is smooth and warm from the sun. It is not like on the _Dutchman_ , where there is blood stuck in the cracks of the floorboards and grime clinging to the soles of your feet, where you tread carefully so as not to be caught unaware. It is so different here that for a second Luke almost wishes he could stay like this forever.

 

“Have you ever been in love?”

  


He doesn't wait for her answer, but he sees her nod from the corner of his eyes.

  


“I don't know how to describe it, but... When you see someone who is suffering and trying so hard to push everyone away... It's like you're watching someone bleeding out slowly... … And somehow, after a while, you start to feel their pain. And it's so, _so_ painful that you just can't leave it alone, you know?”

 

There is a flicker of understanding on her face, and then her brows furrow in confusion.

  


“But feeling sorry for someone isn't the same as loving them.”

  


He considers this.

  


“There is a difference between caring for someone and feeling sorry for them. Or maybe there isn't. Maybe it's all the same,” Luke says, shrugging.

  


He feels like by telling her about his feelings, he is admitting something to himself that he has been in denial over for a long time.

  


“It doesn't matter. All I know is when Beckett had the heart and I saw him suffering... I was hurting, too. A hollow ache in my chest, like my heart had been scraped out. I just wanted the pain to stop.”

  


He exhales a breath, feeling as he does a great weight lift from his shoulders.

  


“You wanted to die?” she asks, and she sounds almost shocked at this.

  


“I wanted him to live,” is all he says.

  


He watches the sky drain of all color. Next to him, Elizabeth doesn't say anything. She digests his words, not looking at him until her mouth parts with a silent “oh”. The wind carries with it the faint scent of salt and, underneath it, the smell of rain-wet wood.

 

He looks up and the rain starts to fall.

* * *

 

The _Dutchman_ greets them with a dampness that crawls under their skins the second they set foot on deck.

 

The air is dank and heavy. Luke can smell the rage that hangs over the ship like a thick mist, and he quietly wonders why he is doing this. Rot is creeping across the walls and eating away at the decaying wood. The rain falls down on them mercilessly.

 

The air under deck is even worse, and he can feel it sliding down his spine like tiny drops of rain. He shivers in his drenched clothing and motions for them to follow him. They do so after some hesitation.

 

Fear has tied Luke's stomach into painful knots.

 

The crew acknowledges him and sneer at Jack and Turner following after. They don't fit in with their bright colors and soft skin and free movements, couldn't be more out of place. Turner walks over to his father and doesn't look at Jack, who is gnawing at the side of his thumb and looking small next to a grinning Maccus. Neither of them look at him.

 

Luke shuts his eyes to recapture the illusion of a man who knows what he is doing, even if he doesn't, and opens them again when the silence becomes overwhelming.

 

“I challenge Davy Jones,” he says, biting his lip at the tremor in his voice, the man's name summoning him from the darkness of his quarters.

 

The Captain of the Dutchman materializes out of the shadows, his crableg dragging against the rotting floor. He gives Luke a dark look, but takes a seat opposite of him as though he has been expecting this.

 

In the soft glow of the lamplight Jones' eyes glint dangerously, the rage evident, and Luke can read betrayal in every line of his face.

 

Then his expression is devoid of any emotion.

 

“Make yer wager, then,” he tells Luke.

 

Someone drops their dice into the open palm of his hand. Luke doesn't see who's dice he is holding. His eyes are focused on Jones' face.

 

“My soul and my freedom, against Bill Turner's freedom and Jack's safety.”

 

Understanding lights up his face, and then a different source of rage distorts Jones' features. His tentacles writhe with it. Muted whispers run through the men who have gathered to watch, and Bootstrap looks from his son to Luke like he doesn't understand why he is doing any of this.

 

“Ye want to trade places, again, Mr Flynn? _Heh_. Ye never learn, do ye?”

 

It's a cruel jab, and Luke grips the dice in his hand even tighter. They have absorbed the heat from his skin and are now warm to the touch. He uncurls his fingers, the dice tumbling from his hand.

 

“Yes or no?”

 

Jones sneers at him. The dice are cast at the same time that a wave crashes into the ship and pushes some of the men off their feet. Luke and Jones stare at each other, neither of them moving.

 

“I gave ye back yer freedom once,” Jones says, and over the sound of the falling rain it will stay between them. “have ye deluded yerself into thinking I would do so again?”

 

“I told you,” Luke's gaze softens slightly. “I don't care about my freedom.”

 

_And you already know my soul is yours._

 

There are more important things at risk.

 

He lifts the cup and looks at the dice underneath. _Two twos. Three fours._ Two ways he can play this. He can play it safe, and Jones will see through him easily. Or he can risk everything.

 

“Two twos.”

 

Across from him Jones looks at his own dice.

 

“ _Hhm_... Three twos.”

 

His eyes meet Jack's, and Luke smiles at him in what he hopes comes off as reassuring. He has played this game before and lost. He had been so easy to read, easy to see through. He will not lose again.

 

“Four twos.”

 

Jones looks at him like Luke's freedom is already in his hands.

 

“Five twos.”

 

The rain is getting worse. His clothes are soaked and water trickles down the hollow of his throat and down his chest. Luke is shivering so bad and Jones is daring him to call his bluff... He can tell by the slight tilt of his mouth that Jones is watching for him to lose his courage and give himself away. He looks at the dice, and at Turner and his father, watching him with equally wretched expressions on their faces. Next to them Jack is looking just like them.

 

If he loses, Turner will never stop searching for the heart. He knows this like he knows that Turner is a real bastard and not everything in life is easy, and maybe everything isn't lost just because he loses this game. And the knowledge that those three things won't change if he does gives him hope.

 

“ _Five fours_.”

 

Some of the fear in his stomach bleeds into his expression. His eyes blink against the rain falling into his eyes. Jones' laugh is a murky, mocking sound.

 

“Liar!”

 

And Luke's heart jumps in his chest, seeing the faces of the dice lying on the flat table.

 

The man of the crew break their silence and voice their sheer disbelief, because nobody has beaten the Captain of the Flying Dutchman at his own game, and Jack is grinning widely at him, relieved and impressed at once.

 

Five fours. Three of them are Luke's own.

 

He didn't lose, and so Bill Turner is free. Turner won't be searching for the heart. Jack is safe. Luke's soul and his freedom, what little worth they are to him, are his. Everything will be alright.

 

“You did it, luv, as I knew you would. I never doubted,” Jack is standing next to him and Luke grins, because he is just so relieved. Bill Turner and his son are out of earshot, and the crew is talking animatedly among themselves. Will catches his eye and gives him the slightest nod. Luke has kept his word, and now it is on Will to keep his.

 

He looks for Jones, but the man is gone. He looks around for any sign of him, but Jack is already pulling him towards the rowboat and Luke's voice is drowned out by the waves and the rain around them. He can't see Jones.

 

Jack's hand on his arm helps him into the boat, and Luke, relieved and tired and clothes so heavy from the rain, lets him. Turner and his father climb in after them, and then they are out on open water.

 

The rain stops.

* * *

 

He doesn't speak as night falls. The lids of his eyes feel so heavy. His drenched clothing sticks uncomfortably to his skin.

 

Scowling, he tugs at the wet fabric, his head leaning against Jack's shoulder. Across from them Will and his father are talking quietly.

 

“You've been unsettling, uncharacteristically quiet. Everything all right, luv?” Jack asks, turning his head slightly to catch a glimpse of the tiredness on Luke's face. He looks at Luke with almost paternal pride in his eyes, and his hand on Luke's shoulder is solid and warm.

 

“Jack...”

 

“Hm?”

 

Luke thinks of his life on the _Black Pearl_. Of the day he has had and how it felt to be there again, in the middle of Jack and his friends and everything he used to have. Of how bright and full of warmth it is in comparison to his life at the _Dutchman_.

 

Because there is no warmth to be had in the cold corners of the _Dutchman_. The ship is all sharp edges and decaying walls, so ancient and wet, where he jumps at shadows and falls asleep to the haunting sound of music from the Captain's quarters. The Captain and the brutish collection of men who are trapped on a ship same as Luke had been are all there is.

 

But it is the place he is needed the most.

 

“I have to go back, Jack.”

 

He is swaying on his feet, and Jack is standing suddenly to keep him from falling over. Will and his father look up at Luke like they didn't understand what he just said.

 

“I was hoping you wouldn't say that,” Jack says.

 

He pinches the bridge of his nose, gives Luke a quick once over and steps back, hands raised as though he is figuring out where to put them. When Luke stays on his feet he gives him a gentle pat on the shoulder, saying, “I guess that's it then, eh?”

 

Luke shakes his head. He smiles wearily at him.

 

“We'll see each other again,” he promises, and Jack nods at him with a knowing smile on his lips and the beads in his dreads clicking together quietly.

 

“Take care of yourself, luv. I will not be setting foot on that accursed ship again, even for you.”

 

He laughs, one foot on the boat's side. Far off, the _Dutchman_ is calling for him.

 

He glances back at Jack, who is now looking at the _Pearl_ with such longing on his face that Luke can't regret anything he did today, and then he is jumping into the water and swimming towards the _Dutchman_.

 

When he looks over his shoulder, the _Black Pearl_ is falling back, the lamps lighting up the night being put out one by one.

* * *

 

The climb onto the ship would have been easy, if it wasn't for him being so tired and if the wounds on his back weren't so raw.

 

He doesn't make it onto the ship, but is hanging from the side of it. His fingernails scrape and slip on the pallid wood, and for a second he is falling again, but he holds on with his his remaining strength, teeth grit, chin resting on the sodden wood. A harsh gust of wind shoots a spray of seawater under his shirt and up his back. His bare feet are sliding off the ship's side, and he doesn't have the energy to pull himself up.

 

The back of his neck itches like someone is watching him.

 

Movement in the shadow of the mast catches his eye. Luke is suddenly aware of Jones' presence, even though the man doesn't step forth. The shadows shift and thicken around him. Jones keeps to them faithfully, and after a long moment of silence Luke looks away.

 

He opens his mouth to speak, but the wood is pressing against his throat and so the words come out as a wet gurgle of “I'm sorry.” and “I didn't have a choice.”.

 

Just as Luke begins to slip off Jones steps forward to grab him by the arm, pulling him up to eye-level. Their eyes meet, and Luke swallows hard against the tightness in his throat.

 

“I'm sorry,” he says again.

 

Jones sneers at him, but sets him down on his feet.

 

“I would never leave.”

 

“And if ye were ta leave, what will it matter to me?”

 

He can see relief and rage and denial on Jones' face, so much of it he wonders how the man can stand it. He takes a step forward, ignoring the tremors in his arms and legs. Jones jerks as if he's been shoot, and then he turns abruptly and walks away from him. Luke watches his retreating back and feels guilt swell in his chest.

 

What has he done?

* * *

 

He shivers under the thin sheets of his bunk. His knees are bent and arms wrapped around his chest, fingers digging into his skin. He clings to his blanket and, despaired, begins to whimper. The pitiful sound crawls up his throat from the place in his chest where it aches and falls out of his mouth, just as the tears begin to flow.

 

Luke squeezes his eyes shut, but finds no sleep.

 

Pushing off the sheets, he pads through the sleeping ship on bare feet, without any noise so as to not wake anyone else. His fingers find the door to Jones' quarters easily, pressing the flat of his palm against the decaying wood. He hesitates, then pushes the door open and quietly slips into the room.

 

Jones is sitting on his bunk, the sheets lying in a tangled mess next to it. He has taken off his coat and is left wearing his undershirt and breaches. His hat is sitting on the desk against the wall.

 

A whimper pushes at the back of Luke's throat.

 

He doesn't want to cry again, but he does in earnest now. Jones does look up at him then, looking at him as he stands crying in the doorway. Luke is taking slow steps towards the bunk and sitting down next to Jones like he has nowhere else to go.

 

They sit like that for some time, not saying anything. Luke's quiet whimpers are the only sound in the room. If Jones is disgusted by this he doesn't let any of it show on his face. There is no anger here. No rage and no mocking smile or quiet indifference. He looks as calm as Luke has ever seen him.

 

“Ye cannot love what ye don’t understand,” Jones says quietly next to him.

 

Luke doesn't know how to answer him. He hiccups and wipes the tears from his eyes with shaking hands, silent until he has the answer.

 

“I guess we should have talked more than we did. Maybe then I could understand you.”

 

The hiccups don't stop and Luke's eyes are swimming and strands of damp hair fall into his face. He can imagine how he must look.

 

“I want to understand you. God, I want to.”

 

What he can't say is, _I want to understand why you go about everything the way you do, why you say the cruel things you say_ , because tonight had been him who was cruel. Not Jones.

 

Luke would tell him how sorry he is for leaving if it would even make the slightest difference.

 

“Perhaps we should've talked more.”

 

Jones' gaze is so blue, no longer the stormy grey of the ocean, but the deep blue of a becalmed sea. His eyes flick down to Luke's mouth, but he doesn't move, and neither does Luke. They sit in silence, until a fit of laughter spills from Luke's lips.

 

“We were both so fucking bad at this, weren't we?”

 

Next to him, Jones nods in agreement. After everything they are just so tired.

 

In the morning, Luke doesn't even know which one of them fells asleep first.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are going to get complicated from here on... Or will they? The worst is yet to come. One more chapter, and then we're at the end of this little story.


	6. The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it, the last chapter to You The Abandoned. Thanks everyone for keeping up with this story, and I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.  
> -Ledgers

 

The winds change direction and with it do his duties aboard the Dutchman. Long days give way to equally long nights, and Luke finds himself falling into old habits. As night falls he soundlessly steps into the Captain's quarters and let the man's playing lull him to sleep, waking up on time to get to work. They don't talk, and Jones only acknowledges him with a quick glance in his direction and a curled lip.

 

Luke discovers that since the battle against the East Indian Trading Company, things have returned to the way they were. From a sinking ship, the crew takes three survivors, all of them men. From the Dutchman Luke watches as the other ship falls underneath the waves, shifting uneasily on his feet and glancing at Jones standing stiff-backed at the wheel, but the man's face is as void as ever.

 

Luke is not a member of the crew, and so he is not bound to the Dutchman. If the ship were to dive underwater, he would drown.

 

Jones' has not given the order to do so ever since Luke came back onto the ship.

* * *

 

 

Luke isn't sure when it starts, only that it does. Jones gaze keeps moving to him whenever the man thinks he isn't looking, pulled by some gravitational force he just can't shake. He looks at him when Luke is securing the mainsail with Jimmy Legs barking insults at him, or when he and a man double his size and weight are tumbling across the deck, beating each other bloody while the men are jeering them on.

 

So Luke looks back, eyes full of confusion and curiosity and amusement all at the same time.

 

Jones directs his eyes to the open sea, looking away as if all of it is uninteresting to him.

 

Between staring at him and trying not to get caught doing so, he becomes aware of just how intensely Jones is looking at him. The man's eyes move over him in calculated, slow strokes, as if he is searching for a sign and can not find it.

* * *

 

 

They come across a shipwreck and scavenge the vessel for anything and everything of use to them.

 

Luke finds a small tin box buried underneath the wreck. He opens it and smiles and pockets it with a feeling of excitement in his chest. One of the men finds a barrel of malted beer and even some opiates, and further below deck a grinning Koleniko is holding up a bag of red potatoes and spices. Hunger is still a thing every man aboard the Dutchman understands, and the sweet taste of sugar and the earthy flavor of potatoes roasted over hot coals is not lost on any of them. Their hunger for food more flavorful is shared after eating uncooked fish day after day, and Luke's stomach growls at the prospect of eating something other than what the sea gives them for free.

 

He searches the Captain's cabin for anything else that could be of use, and when he steps around the crammed desk-- he is speechless at the sight of a young woman cowering underneath it.

 

She couldn't be older than him, dark haired and pretty and staring at him as if he were holding a blade to her throat, and maybe it would be kinder than what awaited her should anyone from the crew find her. Luke knows the fate of women on pirate ships. He still remembers that time one of the men had brought a woman onboard and asked him with a smirk if Luke wanted a turn after he was through.

 

But between the middle of nowhere and a crew of hungry men there really is nowhere for her to go.

 

He holds out a hand to help her up, but she flinches so violently that she knocks over the pile of books on top of the desk. The noise has multiple men coming into the room, some of them with their weapons in hand ready for a fight.

 

“Find something?” Clanker asks, stomping around the desk to see the young woman underneath it, a rictus grin on his face. He yanks her up and ignores her pleas as he hauls her towards the stairs. Luke opens his mouth to stop him, following up the stairs and onto the deck of the Dutchman. The young woman is struggling, biting and scratching at the restraining arm with one hand and cradling her stomach with the other.

 

The sight twists his stomach into knots. He finally puts a hand on Clanker's shoulder, who gives him a questioning look.

 

“You got a problem?”

 

“Leave her alone,” he tells him, because a woman in her situation taken by force-- he doesn't want that on his conscience. “If you haven't noticed, she's not in the condition to do in any of that.”

 

The man scowls at him, turning to Luke fully with a nasty glint in his eye. The young woman has gone limp under his arm.

 

“I know she's not your type, so why don't you shove off, Flynn, and leave some fer the rest of us.”

 

Luke gives him an equally aggressive stare, hand moving to the hilt of his sword. Clanker does the same. Around them, the men share looks. One of them is talking about going to get the Captain. Luke isn't looking at the woman, but at Clanker's fingers tightening around his sword. Then with a yell the other man is on top of him, swinging his sword at Luke with such force that Luke has no choice but to jump out of the way. Blood flies as the tip of Clanker's shining blade bites into his upper arm.

 

A pained grunt slips out before he can contain it, and then they are crossing blades, the sound of metal on metal cutting through the air.

 

He rushes forward, falling to his knees and sliding under the next swing aimed at his head, the blade missing him by a hair's fraction as he pulls his arm up, but Clanker is quick for a man of his bulk and he block's him easily. Luke dodges about the deck, ducking under a swing that would have cut off his arm and bracing for the pain as his sword hits the deck with a metallic clang.

 

Abruptly he is pulled back by a clenched fist around the collar of his shirt. Before he can even get a word out, the tentacle wrapping around his neck tells him who the owner of the hand is.

 

“Explain ta me what ye think yer doing, _Mr Flynn_ _._ ”

 

He wrenches himself away to face Jones, who's beard is rippling with annoyance.

 

“I'm trying to teach the men some fucking decency, _Captain_.”

 

Jones raises a brow at him, and Luke juts his chin at the woman who is being restrained by a cursing Maccus after she sinks her teeth into his arm. The tall man loosens his grip, and the young woman next runs into the arms of Koleniko.

 

“We found a woman onboard the ship, Capt'n,” Clanker cuts in, as if Jones' couldn't see the weeping thing on the deck of the ship for himself. “but Flynn over here doesn't want to share the spoils.”

 

“Look at her. Do you really think she's up for your shit?” Luke says, turning back to look at the man.

 

“You're not part of the crew, so any booty is ours to do with as we want.”

 

“She's not some _plunder_ for you to just use.”

 

“Who the hell made you Capt'n, eh, Flynn? I don't take my orders from you!”

 

“She's pregnant, you arse!”

 

There is a moment of silence in which the men all look at the woman in Koleniko's arms, or more accurately they all look at her round belly, the little they can see under her bunched clothes peeking from in between her fingers. There is an uneasy shuffling of feet, and then Clanker is shrugging his shoulders. Luke looks at Jones, taking in the situation.

 

“And ye wish to spare the wench from that fate?” he asks finally.

 

Luke nods.

 

A slight twitch of Jones' lips. He jerks his head to Maccus, who looks at his Captain expectantly. Luke watches as the woman is dragged off towards the brig, relief clearly written in every line on her face. She gives him a hesitant smile. Clanker spits at his feet, and the men of the crew go back to stowing away the goods.

 

The door to Jones' quarters is open. Luke suddenly remembers the small tin box safely tucked away in his pocket, and follows after him. Once he shuts door, the next thing he feels is something heavy encompassing his throat.

 

“Ye have been causing quite the unrest among the crew,” Jones says quietly, inches from Luke's face. He smiles at him.

 

“You're going to kill me?”

 

“ _Don't_ tempt me.”

 

“I've got something for you.”

 

With a incredulous snort, Jones lets go of him. Luke rubs a hand at his throat and pulls out the small tin box. He holds it out to him, averting his eyes. He had taken it because it reminded him of the Captain, but he suddenly feels stupid giving it to Jones, feeling the color rush to his cheeks.

 

Jones' fingers brush across his palm and curl around the small object to lift it up, considering. He opens it, and Luke chances a quick glance at Jones' face. The siphon at the man's neck flares with his breath, and then he is snapping shut the tin box and stowing it away in his coat.

 

“I just thought that-- you haven't been smoking as much as I remember so I thought that maybe you needed some more tobacco...”

 

Jones' makes a noise that is either agreement or gratitude, or maybe it is both. Luke dares to push off the door and walk further into the room.

 

“Why come to the aid of some pregnant woman?” Jones asks at last. His voice is neither angry nor curious.

 

“Why?”

 

“Hhm.”

 

Luke shrugs. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and settles for crossing his arms across his chest. He is intensely aware of Jones' eyes on him.

 

“I don't know. I guess she just reminded me of my mother when she was pregnant,” Luke tells him slowly, looking down at his feet as he does.

 

“Ye have family?” Jones asks, in a tone of voice that indicates that the concept of family is foreign to him and he is asking Luke to explain it to him.

 

“I did. My mother became pregnant with my sister when I was little and she died during childbirth. I don't know if my sister is still alive, I don't even know her name. And you know my father, but I'm pretty sure he is dead.”

 

To his surprise Jones is interested, because the next thing he asks is, “And how does an orphan end up on a pirate ship?”

 

Luke laughs.

 

“Jack caught me sneaking onboard the Black Pearl. I grew up with the stories of Captain Jack Sparrow, and for a boy out on his own a life of adventure was a dream come true.”

 

He shakes his head, remembering how disappointed he had been when he found out that all the stories were just that- stories. That Jack Sparrow was just a tall tale and didn't really ride on the back of some sea creature, and that he hadn't given his soul to a witch who had covered him in handcrafted oils and made him drink the blood of children to cheat death as many times as he had.

 

“He told me I could stay if I could hold my breath for more than two minutes, and when I came up from the water he was sailing off and leaving me in the middle of the ocean,” Luke tells him. “But he must've felt bad about leaving some kid who didn't know how to swim to drown, because he came back and told me I could stay.”

 

A murky sound that sounds like a chuckle, and Luke's eyes are on Jones' face. He can see wry amusement there, but it is gone as quick as it came.

 

“At first I would throw up a lot because I became sea sick and couldn't keep food in my stomach for long. I've never seen a crew of sea-hardened men so worried because of a child dying on their ship.”

 

He remembers Jack's panicked face and remembers him shouting at his men to find him a doctor, and how Gibbs had chided him for taking his eyes off of Luke after he had almost fallen out of the crow's nest.

 

“It got easier over time.”

 

“The sea is in yer blood, or it is not,” Jones says suddenly, eyes blue and tempestuous as the water outside.

 

He is the sea, a god as much as Calypso herself. And though it is he, and not her, who will be forgotten by men, his name has become a legend. He is god of the depths, and of the changing waters who's shipwrecks he pulled into his seas.

 

“Ye have it in you.”

 

Luke nods at this.

 

“I can't imagine a life away from the sea.”

 

“Away from the sea, or away from _this_?”

 

He can feel the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

 

“This?”

 

Jones raises a hand to brush away a fringe of his hair. The nails scratching at his scalp are not gentle, because gentle has never been the man's way of doing things, and the unexpected shove at his chest is further proof of that.

 

Luke smiles then, back flat against the wall.

 

“How about this, an answer for an answer,” he says boldly.

 

Jones snorts but nods his head in agreement.

 

“When did you change?”

 

“My... _transformation_... did not start until I decided to abandon the duty placed upon me.”

 

The tentacles of his beard ripple inward as if to emphasize this.

 

“When ye cut out yer heart, placed it in the chest, how did ye feel?”

 

“Vulnerable,” Luke admits. “Like I had exposed myself for everyone to see. My pain, my despair and my anger... all of it.”

 

“Ye know what this feels like, then.”

 

“Was I your first kiss?”

 

Jones scoffs at him.

 

“I was never intimate with her. She would not allow it until I fulfilled my _duty_ , and I was too blinded by her to care.”

 

“Do you still love her?”

 

“My turn, I believe.”

 

Under Jones' intent gaze, Luke can feel himself shrinking.

 

He has never cared about his looks, and since he meet Jones there in not an inch on his body that isn't scarred. There are white lines coiling around muscle and bone, jagged red scars cutting across his back that look like they're bleeding, and the letters _E.I.T.C._ burned into hip. All of them healed badly.

 

And then there is the scar in the middle of his chest, shaped like the streak of a shooting star.

 

“Ye still have not told me what ye hope to achieve here,” Jones says, stepping into Luke's personal space and caging him in with his fingers spread against the wall next to Luke's head. “You want to be my—“ his eyes flick down to the scar under the thin material of Luke's shirt. “—lover? Remain here until ye become part of the ship like everyone else?”

 

“Pretty bold of you to think that I'm in love with you.”

 

He feels a twinge of what he thinks may be anger swelling in his chest.

 

“Hhm. Did ye not carve out yer own heart for a chance of making the pain stop?”

 

“I'm not you.”

 

Luke shoves at Jones' chest, but the man stays unmoving, the weight of him trapping Luke with ease. He pushes himself off the wall and shoves Jones _again_ , this time teeth grit in real anger. The man grunts and stumbles back a step, and his claw is around Luke's middle and pulling him back with him. They crash into the desk, Luke falling on top of him in a flail of limbs. Jones, a good bit bigger and stronger than him, reverses their positions quickly and grips his waist harshly, the nails of his fingers digging into his skin.

 

Luke bites his lip, tears welling in his eyes. His fingernails are biting into the tissue of Cutler Beckett's scar, and Luke rams his elbow into Jones' face with as much force as he can, hitting him square in the jaw-- but if he feels it, he gives no sign.

 

“Get off me!”

 

He bucks his hips to throw Jones off, but all he manages to do is make the man on top of him press down with his full weight. Luke can feel bone grind against bone, their hips crushing each other at an angle that is bordering on painful. He winces, and after a moment of more struggling and spitting threats through clenched teeth he lets his head fall onto the desk with a dull thump.

 

“I hate you.” Chest heaving and breathing heavily, he presses out, “I just... want to stay.”

 

Jones' brows furrow slightly.

 

“God, I just want to fucking stay. Here- with you.”

 

“Ye would have ta join my crew for that, Mr Flynn. I don't take stowaways.”

 

“Then I would change and become like you and the others!”

 

Jones chuckles in wry amusement.

 

“It is different for everyone. Ye would not change overnight, if yer so concerned about yer looks. Nor will I give you yer freedom.”

 

“So sure I will change my mind?”

 

If it is reassurance Jones is looking for then Luke will give it, so he presses his lips against Jones' in a quick kiss. It is their second kiss, but it feels like their first. It is clumsy and eager and wet. They fumble and shove. They don't know what to do with their tongues. Their teeth collide inside of their mouths. They don't fit together, though that doesn't stop either of them. Neither of them complain. Luke presses his lips to Jones' cheek just because he can.

 

“A lifetime of servitude.”

 

He is breathless, panting the words. His heart beats madly in his chest at the sight of Jones' mouth curving into the semblance of a smile.

 

“A lifetime of servitude, then.”

* * *

 

 

Days go by, and Luke half-expects to wake up in the morning to find himself covered in sea life-- or having changed into a shark like his bunk mate next to him.

 

Maccus rolls his eyes at some of his questions, and he gathers as much patience as he can manage to inform him with a pointed grin that he won't be changing so quickly, and that he should hold onto his humanity for as long as he could, because there would come a day when he would miss it.

 

He knows he does.

* * *

 

 

After their latest plunder, the cook onboard the ship prepares a stew that has all the men salivate and foaming at the mouth. There is a lot of shoving and pushing as they get in line, and Luke helps himself to as much food as is allowed and makes his way to the brig.

 

The young woman is sleeping when he opens the door and wide awake by the time he sits down across from her. She must be starving, because she accepts the stew readily and begins to eat in the most un-lady like manner he has ever seen. He listens to her as she tells him around mouthfuls of food how she met the baby's father, and how despite her parents' wishes she had decided to keep it. Disowned and renounced by her own family for keeping her bastard, she had gotten onto the next ship in hopes of starting a new life. She reminds him so much of his own mother that he has to look away from her-- though he does look when she takes his hand and presses it flat against her stomach. He is so shocked by it that he almost misses the tiny movement against his palm.

 

“Do you have a name for it yet?” he asks, looking everywhere but at the expecting young woman. It is an easy thing to imagine that it is his mother here with him and not her. She, too, would put his hand on her stomach.

 

He pulls his hand away.

 

“No, silly. I don't even know if it is a girl or a boy, though I'm hoping for a boy.”

 

They talk. Luke tells her about his time on the Pearl and the Dutchman, and watches her eyes widen at some of the things he tells her, an endless stream of questions falling from her mouth. When it is finally time for him to leave, he promises to make sure she gets all the food that she needs.

 

She asks him for his name as he is walking away, and with a shrug of his shoulders he gives it to her.

* * *

 

 

They leave the young woman on a small spit of land Luke has never seen on any map, and as she rows the boat to the shore she is waving at him. The sight reminds him of his mother, and he quickly turns away before the memory can resurface in his mind.

 

He doesn't know it then, but someday he will find himself standing across from a young boy with familiar sandy brown hair and almond-shaped green eyes, and will ask him for his name.

 

The boy will only shrug at him and say,

 

“It's Luke.”

* * *

 

 

They are caught in the middle of a storm. Luke doesn't see the wave crashing into the ship until it is too late.

 

He is thrown overboard, a solid wall of water slamming into him, and if he hadn't been so lucky the fall would have killed him. His next breath is a lungful of salt water, panic rushing into his chest. For a moment of being pulled under the current, he forgets that he isn't human anymore, that he can't drown, and above him men of the crew are shouting “Man overboard! Man overboard!”.

 

Luke opens his mouth in terror and the sea floods in.

 

“Hel-” He can't get the words out, choking on the water crashing over him that is pushing him further out, clawing at the surface in desperation and screaming at the top of his lungs. His fear of drowning is all but forgotten. His heart constricts painfully in his chest, terror and helplessness clawing through.

 

He can't find the Dutchman.

 

The next thing he feels is the feeling of a tentacle sliding around his wrist and tugging him _down, down, down_. Luke opens his eyes, and a breath of relief shudders through his body at the sight of Jones face inches from his, the Dutchman underwater and the crew all watching him cling to their Captain.

 

“Yer still afraid ye will drown, after all of this?”

 

He wraps his arms around himself, fighting back tears, choking on the salt in his throat. The men return to their stations at the Captain's look, and then Luke is pulled into a corner.

 

When he is sure Jones is the only one who will hear, he buries his face in the man's chest and starts to weep...

* * *

 

 

Some nights Jones will look at him and quickly look away, and others he will openly soak up the human warmth that still clings to Luke's skin and feel the heat not yet lost to the chill of the sea.

 

He touches Luke unhesitatingly and murmurs all kinds of dark promises in his ear, and while they are never admissions of love Luke doesn't hesitate to tell Jones how he feels, declaring his love in words and kisses and all the ways he knows how.

 

There is an easy understanding between them, a give and take, a back and forth with them that Luke has become used to. It is easy until it is not, and he gives Jones the space he needs when the other man asks for it without ever really asking, or when their miscommunication has Luke sleep in his own bunk.

 

One day he won't be as warm, but maybe Jones will have gotten used to it by then.

* * *

 

 

The change happens suddenly, contrary to the things Maccus told him. Luke wakes up one morning with pain coursing through his bloodstream and his body spasming so violently that he falls out of his bunk. Maccus is the first to wake up, and then Palifico is crouching next to him and tearing away the fabric of his shirt.

 

It hurts more than Luke imagined it would, and his muscles contract, mouth opening in a gasp. The chorus of men's voices fades into the background as Jones pushes through them.

 

“The pain will stop,” he tells him and sits Luke upright to look over him with Maccus looming over his shoulder. The tall man blinks at Luke and then at his Captain.

 

“Are they-?”

 

Jones nods, frown on his face. They stare at the place below his jaw, and Luke lifts up a hand to touch his neck and flinches at the torn flesh he encounters there. His eyes find Jones', a sound that is caught between a gasp and a laugh spilling over his lips.

 

“Gills?”

 

“A gift from the sea,” Jones says, and behind him Maccus' shoulders are shaking with laughter. The irony of it isn't lost on him. After his last stunt in the water this explains a lot.

* * *

 

He discovers that same night, under Jones' watchful gaze, that on top of the slashes across his throat standing in for gills he has webbing between his toes and fingers, and that the skin at his calves has taken on a bluish tint. It is an anomaly just like everything else, and Jones explains to him that there will be more changes over time, but little ones.

 

They are seated at his desk, a bottle of acquired sherry between them.

 

“I won't turn into a selkie now, right?” he asks jokingly, looking up at the man next to him.

 

“No,” Jones says, eyes drinking in the sight of him. “ye certainly will not.”

 

When Luke looks up there is definite amusement in his eyes.

* * *

 

 

Even after following him for a long time, he still jumps at Jones' command to take no survivors. He has killed before. Luke is no stranger to the pleading voices of men upon the Dutchman.

 

 _Never forget who he is,_ Jack had told him once.

 

He wipes his hands on his pants and wrinkles his nose at the heavy stench of metal and sulfur in the air. Stepping over the corpse of the man he had crossed blades with, his stomach turns at the sight of bodies on deck far as the eye can see.

 

From unease to disgust, Jones watches the mix of expression on his lover's blood-streaked face. Luke's eyes meet his for a second before he looks away. With time the young man will have gotten used to it, as have the men of the crew.

 

On nights where he has to clean the blood off the blade of his sword, Luke sleeps in his own bunk.

 

She comes to him one clear night when he is on watch and the sea around him is calm. Her dreads fall past her shoulders, loose and unbound as she moves, lips pulling into a smile at the sight of him.

 

“You looking well, Luke Flynn,” she says in way of a greeting, as though he expected her to be here. It has been years since Luke has seen her.

 

“Calypso.”

 

She circles him once, her gown rippling with her movements and then stands before him. Her eyes twinkle with mirth.

 

“You 'ave done as I asked. I must be thanking you yet  _again_.”

 

“I didn't do it for you. It was my choice, and it had nothing to do with you.”

 

He half-fears he has over-stepped, but she only laughs at him. It is a melodic, pleasant sound.

 

“An' you do good by him.”

 

“He deserves to be happy.”

 

She nods once. He looks away, and her feet carry her across the deck to the bow of the ship, hands gliding along the rail in a caress.

 

“You are happy?”

 

He is startled by this, because he hadn't expected this to be about him. It had always been about Jones. From the day he met her, Jones had been all she talked about.

 

“I am.”

 

“Then this is what you wanted, no?”

 

After a moment he relaxes his shoulders. “Yeah. It is.”

 

She is pleased with this, her hands suddenly touching Luke's face so lightly he can barely feel it. She kisses his brow, and around them the ocean is calling for her. A spray of water rains down on them, as though demanding she follow it.

 

She gives him one more smile before the water washes over them once more and takes her with it.

 

A second in which Luke feels his heart beat normally again, and in which Jones has left the depth of his quarters. His eyes are shining. Luke can see the silent question in them as they look at each other in silence.

 

Then he walks up to him, until their feet are all but touching, and kisses him. It is only a soft brushing of mouths and gentle pressing of tongues, but it dams the tears in Jones' eyes. When they part, the man looks at him with sad eyes. Luke leans forward ever so slowly and touches his forehead to his.

 

 _“I love you._ For as long as I live, that will never change.”

 

A shudder, and next Jones is pulling Luke with him.

 

Watching them as she follows the push and pull of the waves, Calypso smiles.

* * *

 

 

In the darkness of the room, Luke rests his head on Jones' shoulder. The man grunts at the added weight on top of him, the hand in Luke's hair falling away. He doesn't push him away.

 

He falls asleep like this, with Jones' arms wrapped around his middle and a heartbeat solid and real between them,

 

lulling him in and out of dreams that almost make him forget who's heart it is, or had been.

 

 

 

 

 

**The End.**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Afterword**

 

Being vulnerable, opening up and experiencing pain because of it-- we've all been there. We all have been vulnerable in our lives.

But the reason I wanted to write this story was because _Jones_ ' vulnerability, through cutting out his heart, was completely self-imposed. Because safe for that one vulnerable part of him he is numb to all else. Things that _Luke_ feels so strongly, such as love and hope and sadness have no place in Jones' life. 

I wanted to dive into Luke's character and explore the contrast between them. In an early version of this story Luke and Jones were not supposed to be lovers, but then I realized how much potential this story could have if they were. I just had this character in my mind, Luke, who is naive and selfless and falls in love rather quickly with a man who is, at the beginning of the story, incapable of this. Who stands by Jones' because he can see that vulnerability and can emphasize with it.

Luke's vulnerability is explained early on-- he is afraid of drowning, of being alone, and he openly expresses his feelings. He cuts out _his_ heart and puts it in the Dead Man’s Chest. All of that makes him extremely vulnerable, arguably more so than Jones himself.

And when Luke is holding the heart in his hands, that is when Jones is at his most vulnerable, and it is the turning point in this story-- because Jones realizes that this boy loves him in a way that Calypso didn't. Luke never betrays Jones the way Calypso did. Not intentionally-- he leaves with Jack and gives Jones the impression of abandonment, but he doesn't do it on purpose, and he doesn't do it with the intention of causing pain.

Had this story been written from a girl's point of view, it would have gone differently. I could have written this story with a girl instead, (but since I'm a guy it wouldn't have been as easy) and at the same time I felt like it would not have had the same impact. After Calypso's betrayal Jones holds a good bit of resentment towards women. You can see it in _At World's End_ when he calls Elizabeth a  _Harridan_ and fights her with the full intention of killing her.

So Jones opening up and letting Luke in, giving to him the part that makes him vulnerable, that is his journey in _You, The Abandoned._

 

At the heart of it all, this is supposed to be a story about vulnerability.

 


End file.
